James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is told from the viewpoint of the title character's brother, a schoolteacher, who lives a much different life than Sonny himself. As the story opens, the unnamed teacher has just learned that his younger brother has been arrested for possession and sale of heroin: "I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly …
showed first 75 words of 1065 total

showed last 75 words of 1065 total
…wet at the end of his day at school; but the narrator was wet with the effort of keeping his emotions in check, and now Sonny is wet with the grace of having expressed what he needed to say. The ice has melted. Ice in this story function as a metaphor for the damming of the soul; and we are false to ourselves when we freeze ourselves that way, and false to those we love.