Denial

In "Sonny's Blues" James Baldwin uses the term 'denial' as a theme throughout the story. Only one character attains this trait and he is the narrator. There are four main parts of the story where the narrator shows us that he is in denial. The first time is when he first reads the newspaper which tells him the bad news about his brother. After reading the article a couple times, he says, "It is not to be believed and I kept telling myself that..." (88). Here, the narrator doesn't want to believe that something so horrible as his brother being in rehab could be possible.

After reading about his brother, Sonny, the narrator has to go straight to the school where he teaches algebra to young boys. As he stares at his students, he starts thinking that whether he knows it or not, these kids could be doing drugs in the bathroom right behind his back. But again, he doesn't want to believe that these kids would ever do the things Sonny did to get himself into trouble.

Later in the story, the narrator flashes back to when him and his brother were younger and his Mama tells him a story about how his father's brother died. His Mama was telling him this because she wants him to look out for his brother if she dies. After she tells him this, he says, "I guess i didn't want to believe this." (97), which proves that he is in denial about his brother being a troublemaker. The narrator ends up promising his Mama he won't let anything happen to his brother, but deep down, he still didn't believe that anything bad could possibly happen.

When the Sonny had almost finished school, he told the narrator that he wanted to play jazz music to make money. The narrator doesn't believe that Sonny can play the piano and make enough money to support himself because he had never played the piano before. Even though he is trying to look out for his brother like he promised his Mama, he doesn't believe that Sonny could play that kind of music without getting himself into trouble.

Throughout the story, denial is written all over the narrators forehead and he doesnt realize it until the end. Not only did he deny to himself that anything bad could happen to someone he loves, but he also didn't believe that Sonny would succeed in playing the piano. Lucky for him, he finds out how good Sonny is at playing jazz music and how it made him feel.