n order to understand the menace that he had almost died trying to escape. He realizes that he must come to terms with a failure, “the fact that had held silence- so long!- when (Sonny) had needed human speech to help him,” in order to find a new relationship with his brother (248). The narrator realizes the truth in his mother’s advice to him before she died. “You got to let him know you’s there,” and in doing so Sonny’s brother allow his silence to be challenged by Sonny’s account of his suffering and by the music that is Sonny’s lifeline (240). Sonny cannot simply accept that he has to do the best he can within the environment that he is provided. He feels that “people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?” (242). Sonny tells the reader that he is alive to be a musician but him not being able to make it as a musician leads him into heroin addiction. Sonny is not afraid to test the boundaries of his world in order to find a better place in it while his brother tries to keep the world in its place by ignoring it. The brothers come together when they are faced with terrifying experiences of their lives. Sonny finally allows his brother into his world and once again “play for his life” knowing that his drug problem could come back (243). In an unsteady environment he accepts his brother and his wife, and leans again upon the strength within his family to accept him for what he is. Sonny’s brother tries to teach his baby brother how to live his life. At the end of the story, the narrator learns about life from his younger brother’s music. Sonny’s brother finds new strength in his attempts to support and accept Sonny. In the beginning of the story he says, “I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me,” referring to Sonny’s drug problem (230). The strength Sonny’s br...
