Sonny's Blues

While reading Sonny's Blues I constantly had one person in mind- my older brother Jim. Nearly everything about Sonny, from his drug addiction to his slow walk, reminded me of my brother and the struggles he is still trying to overcome. "I didn't want to believe that I'd ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I had already seen so many others" (89). I feel as if the author took my thoughts and feelings towards my brother out of my head, put them on paper and called them his own. I used to have the typical big brother/little sister relationship with Jim, but as I grew up I had to witness his downfall just like Sonny's older brother. Although he is not physically dead, he is mentally and emotionally and just like Sonny, "all that light in his face gone out."
My brother Jim was also in and out of my & my family's lives. After him being gone for so long, and unwilling to want treatment, there is nothing anyone can do to help. On page 91, when the man outside the school was talking to Sonny's older brother he said, "They'll send him away some place and they'll try to cure him. Maybe he'll even think he's kicked the habit. Then they'll let him loose...Listen, They'll let him out and then it'll just start all over again." This never-ending cycle of drug abuse, treatment, and failure also reminded me of my brother Jim and his struggle to recover. He has been in and out of rehab facilities but just like the man said, the hospitals took him in, gave him "treatment" and then set him free to be back on the streets and back to his problems.
Like Sonny, Jim was also once passionate and determined. He was passionate about his music, friends, and sports, but all of that disappeared once drugs became part of his life and he failed out of school. Trying to get through to Jim seemed exactly like Isabael's struggle to get through to Sonny. They both are "wrapped up in some cloud, some fire, some vision all his own; and there wasn't anyway to reach him" (101).
Unfortunately the story of my brother does not end as well as Sonny's. Nobody in our family has been able to get through to Jim like Sonny was able to with his brother. He is still out on the streets with the same problems, not in a nightclub playing the piano and accomplishing his dream of becoming a musician.