Third Reflection of the Week on Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues"

After reading through "Sonny's Blues" for the first time I was extremely confused at what was in the present and what was in the past. To me the story seemed to be set up at a group of letters, some in the present and some in the past. However, after doing research on Baldwin and the story itself, before reading "Sonny's Blues" for the second time, I realized it was a mixture of the narrator having flash backs as well as his present. 

When I recognized the way the story was set up it made more sense to me the second time I read it and made me think of the relationship I have with my half-sister. Although the relationship I have with my half-sister is not nearly the same as the relationship the two brothers have in the story, I can relate. Growing up, my half-sister and I were 10 years apart. She came from our mom's first marriage but was raised by my dad. Being so young when she was a teenager I never understood some of the choices she made, why she dressed the way she did, or why she talked to my mom the way she did. But then as I got older I realized my sister was going through a typical teenage rebellion stage. My half-sister struggled with a lot of different things in her life and I never understood why she couldn't just change her ways. Then I realized, we were raised differently, her dad was not like my dad and although she only saw him on the weekends he had a huge impact on her life. 

In "Sonny's Blues" the two brothers are two totally different people, when it comes to personality and determination. It is evident that Sonny struggled with addiction problems and perhaps, like my half-sister, was raised differently than his brother, the narrator. The narrator mentions that Sonny and their father fought and that the mother left for the military and never came back, perhaps this affected Sonny more than it affected the narrator. Sonny, like my half-sister, went through a rebellious stage while the narrator sat back and watched his brother ruin his life. Of course tragedy brought them together, similar to me and my half-sister. It did not take a death to bring me and my half-sister together but it took a birth, the birth of her son. When my half-sister gave birth to her son, her entire life changed. I now look up to her and console in her for advice, unlike before I did not want to speak to her because of the decisions she made. Similar to Sonny and his brother, it took finding out that their mother had passed away to bring them together at the funeral and led the narrator to want to help his brother chase his dreams, of music.