"Sonny's Blues"

This is what I got out of Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin. I want to summarize the story as well as give some of my thoughts on things that stuck out to me in the story.
As you first start reading the story it is about someone (I didn’t find out until later that this was the brother of Sonny) reading about Sonny getting caught in a drug bust. This narrator is a school teacher in Harlem. At first I didn’t really understand why the narrator was so interested in Sonny’s predicament with the law, I thought maybe they had just been friends in the past. After finishing teaching for that day the narrator runs into a friend of Sonny’s. This friend expresses remorse for Sonny and how he will be unable to help him any more. Also the friend shares with the narrator that he feels responsible for how Sonny’s life was turning out. On page 34 the friend states “I never give Sonny nothing, but a long time ago I come to high school and Sonny asked me how it felt. I told him it felt great. I did.” I think that this shows how possibly the world that Sonny and his friend grew up in was so bad that doing drugs seemed so enticing. The friend ends up telling the narrator what he thinks will happened to Sonny, how they will try to break his addiction and then let him go to start it again.
Next we find that in fact the narrator and Sonny are brothers. This is because the narrator writes to his brother in jail. But only after the narrator’s daughter, Gracie, has died from polio (which we find out later). To me it seems that Sonny has come a long way in his recovery. He expresses his sadness for the little girl’s death. Once Sonny gets out of jail the narrator meets him in New York and brings him back to live with his family. While eating dinner they begin to bring up memories of they parents. They end up describing both their parents. The father was a drunk who died when Sonny was 15. The narrator remembers that the last time he saw his mother was when he went to war. She shared that she thought his uncle was run over by some white kids and that after that event their father was never quite the same. The narrator then returned from the war to go to his mother’s funeral.
At this point we find out that Sonny really enjoys playing the piano. So he lives with the narrator’s wife’s parents. He plays the piano constantly but is skipping school and spending time with his friends in Greenwich Village. The couple he living with finds this out and Sonny then joins the army after dropping out of school. Both Sonny and the narrator return from war but there is a rift between them whenever they see each other. The story then skips forward to when the narrator’s girl has just died. On page 48 the narrator states “I think I may have written Sonny the very day that little Grace was buried. I was sitting in the living room in the dark, by myself, and I suddenly thought of Sonny. My trouble made his real.” It was at this point I feel the narrator finally understood his little brother’s pain. Maybe they had found something in common with each other.
After this the story moves into the present and Sonny and the narrator are going to Greenwich Village. At this time Sonny begins to open up to his brother. He talks of his addition to herion. How it makes you feel in control of everything. They arrive at the jazz club and the narrator sees how welcome sonny is here. Sonny plays even thought it has been a really long time since he last played the piano. But soon he begins to play wonderfully. After the song the narrator sends up some drinks to Sonny. At this point the brothers seem to have completely understood each other for a second. On page 56 the narrator shares “He didn’t seem to notice it (the drink the narrator had sent to him), but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked towards me, and nodded.”