Characters
- Sonny is the main character's brother. The reader sees him through his brother’s eyes, as a quiet, introspective person with a tendency to withdraw inside himself. Sonny is also described by the narrator as wild, but not crazy. He has a heroin addiction, which led him to jail, but because of his passion for jazz, he became a musician.
- Sonny’s brother is the narrator and main character; his name is never mentioned throughout the story. He is a high school algebra teacher and family man. Unlike Sonny who is constantly struggling with his feelings, he chooses to ignore his own pain.
- Isabel is Sonny’s sister-in-law, she is open and talkative. After Sonny’s mother died, he lived with Isabel in her parents' house for a while, while his brother was in the army.
- Creole is a bass player who leads the band that Sonny plays in at the end of the story. He functions as a kind of father figure for Sonny.
- Sonny's Mother
- Sonny's Father
- Sonny's Uncle (His father's brother)
- Sonny's Friend
Read more about this topic: Sonny's Blues
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)