Darkness

     "Sonny's Blues," so far, has been a absolutely wonderful story.  Sad and I particularly do not like sad stories.  But there are several areas in the book that I would love to write about but the very beginning struck me in a very deep way.  One aspect that I loved was how James Baldwin started off the story.  "I read about in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work.  I read it and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again.  Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story.  I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside" (Page 384).
     This whole passage, I had to re-read a few times.  Baldwin portrays where he is at, how he is feeling about what he is reading and describing, without fail and vividly, everything in him.  I felt as though I was there.  He picked me up off the couch and placed me on that subway with him, and I sat with him in the darkness.  He was in denial, he didn't want what he was reading to be true and kept hoping, in someway, it was not true.  He saw himself on that page he was reading.
     It goes onto the second page and reveals who he was referring to while reading the newsprint.  It was his brother.  He had been caught "peddling and using heroin."  He knows his brother was wild but he never thought that Sonny was crazy.
     The way the classroom was displayed and listening to the students and the way he thinks of them.  That they might all be "popping off needles," he is afraid for them.  Again, he shows that he sees himself.  He grew up the same way they did, the same way his brother did.
     They live in such darkness.  I have seen such darkness through a friend.  This story really pierces the heart.  It is as though I am feeling this story as it could be my friends and I am reliving what happened.