Sonny's Blue's

In reading the short story Sonny's Blue's I found myself sympathizing with Sonny’s brother in the beginning. Some individuals might find the narrator hard to understand. They may not comprehend why the narrators actions were not brotherly but I found that I could somewhat relate to him.

 I have gone through a very similar experience in my life. The narrator felt a sense of humiliation he found out his brother had been placed in jail. I personally can understand because just the questions you are asked when people hear about the arrest can be very humiliating to retell. A family member of mine, my brother, had been arrested at a very young age in life because of very similar things that Sonny was arrested for. I can understand how the narrator can be somewhat embarrassed of the circumstances and even cannot bare to even say the words, instead he uses the word “it” to identify the issue.

It can be so difficult at times talking about a sibling in jail. It can become very embarrassing to have to admit that you have someone in your family who does not have the same morals as you.

 Upon my brother getting out of jail he quickly went back to the things he was doing that got him into jail in the first place. I think that Sonny says it best when he says “when I came back, nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, I was just – older”. What Sonny shows is that it is easy to think things have changed but all this time it was just aging that changed. My brother was still the same person and had even the same attitude towards life but looked very different, aged. I think this is interesting to think about because it is a way of trying to justify with ourselves that we are different when in fact, we are the same but matured.

My brother is finally on track but I really felt that I could relate to the narrator in some sense of how he felt about his brother being in jail. Luckily I have a great relationship with my brother. I know how it feels to swallow the truth about someone when you do not want to believe it yourself or even have anyone else believe it. Sadly, people judge each other when they hear a story that is unusual. Even more sadly, we hide our problems so people do not see us as the unusual one.