Although the narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” is unnamed, he is one of the story’s two central characters. As the story is narrated in first person, the reader learns much about the narrator’s life and worldview as he describes his relationship with Sonny. The brothers grow up as Black boys in Harlem’s housing projects. As such, the narrator grows deeply aware of the psychologically damaging effects of systemic racism and poverty from a young age. For the narrator, such racism manifests as a “darkness” that threatens to envelop the lives of Black people. The narrator describes being a child and seeing the signs of such darkness emerge in adults’ faces during social gatherings. Upon seeing this darkness, he immediately knew that it was “what [the adults] have come from. It’s what they endure” (27).

The narrator’s subsequent life choices are attempts to escape this darkness and flee the poverty that ensnares many of his friends and family. The narrator joins the army during World War II and later becomes an algebra teacher, which for the narrator are signs that “[he] had escaped” the “trap” of the housing projects (24). However, these choices cause growing estrangement from his younger brother Sonny.