What does the narrator’s mother ask him to do for Sonny? Does the olderbrother keep his promise?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The mother is the central moral figure of the story, but we never meet her in “real time” since she is dead. We do, however, hear her voice several times as a flashback. Her last conversation with the narrator ultimately becomes a crucial part of his impetus to reconcile with Sonny. When the narrator promises to take care of his kid brother, his mother warns him it will be hard, but it is clear the narrator doesn’t fully understand what she is asking him to do. She has seen enough of the world’s trouble to be fatalistic: “You may not be able to stop nothing from happening,” she tells him, before adding, “But you got to let him know you’s there” (par. 104). Baldwin’s story tells the story of what happened to Sonny because his brother failed him. Unlike Sonny’s drug addict friend at the beginning, the narrator doesn’t see that he is, in part, responsible for Sonny’s demise. In one sense, “Sonny’s Blues” is the story of the narrator’s slow, difficult process of living up to the promise he gave his mother