"Darkness" in "Sonny's Blues"

1) "But now I feel like a man who's been trying to climb out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sum up there, outside. I got to get outside" (pg. 20). This was said in Sonny's letter to the narrator. At the time, Sonny was in rehab because of his drug addiction and relates that to "darkness". The sun that he sees outside is what he also sees as his freedom from rehab. He is looking from the darkness (his situation) to the "light," which is one step forward.

2) "The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frightens the child obscurely... The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happening to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him" (pg. 23). This "darkness" is referring to the lifestyle that the adults are used to because it's the same lifestyle they grew up knowing. There is more to the "darkness" than just the nighttime, it is also referring to the safeness of the streets where they live. The child realizes the adults don't want him to know about their experiences because he might realize he will come to know the same experiences and lifestyle one day.

3) "He says he never in his life seen anything as dark as that road after the lights of that car had gone away... Oh, yes. Your Daddy never did really get right again" (pg. 24). The narrator's mother was telling him about his uncle's death and how much is affected his father. Ever since the death, his father saw every white man as the man who killed his brother. The "darkness" could represent the darkness of the road that the father remembers after the car sped off. The "darkness" could also represent the adness of how his father was forever changed after that night.

4) "I was sitting in the living room in the dark by myself, and I suddenly thought of Sonny. My trouble made his real" (pg. 29). This thought crossed the narrator's mind as he was thinking about his trouble of dealing with his daughter's death. He realized then that Sonny was in a very serious and harmful situation that could eventually lead to his death as well. This "darkness" represents the death and sad emotions in the narrator's thoughts.