ize that then. Hethought that perhaps Sonny was just too young or too high on drugs to understandwhat life was about.Finally, the third view changed was the narrator's responsibility towards Sonny.Before the brothers' mother died, the narrator promised he would take it uponhimself to take care of Sonny should the mother die. The narrator viewed Sonnyas a responsibility he had. Because of the promise made to his mother, he felthe owed it to his mother to take care of Sonny. Therefore, whenever he didsomething for Sonny it was because his mother had wanted him to, not because hecared about Sonny. As soon as taking care of Sonny stopped working with hisschedule, he sent him to his mother-in-law's house. During the story, however, along separation brought the narrator into his second stage of thinking, andchanged his views of Sonny. The narrator recognized that Sonny wasn't just a kidany more. Sonny had been in the Navy and had been living on his own for sometime. Yet he didn't see him as a man either. "He was a man by then, of course,but I wasn't willing to see it."(52) He saw Sonny as a teenager of sorts. Sonnydressed strangely, became family with strange friends, and listened to stillstranger music." In the narrator's eyes, Sonny foolishly thought he kneweverything. Even though the narrator's views on Sonny's manhood changed, duringthe second stage his feelings about Sonny's sense of reality didn't. When he sawSonny after Sonny's stay in the Navy, the narrator still viewed Sonny as if hewere on drugs. "He carried himself, loose and dreamlike all the time, ...and hismusic seemed to be merely an excuse for the life he led. It sounded just thatweird and disordered."(52) He thought that Sonny had been driven even fartherfrom reality than before. He thought that Sonny's view of reality was sodistorted that he might as well have been dead. Unlike his views on Sonny'ssanity, when his views on Sonny's manhood changed so he thought, did hisrespon...
