In "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin, darkness is used as a symbol to represent both the dangers and difficulties faced by the African American community. The narrator describes this darkness as inevitable He speaks of his students saying that "all they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which now enveloped them, and the darkness of the films, which had them. blinded to this other darkness” (Baldwin, 123).Say no to plagiarism Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned” Get an original essay As his students get older, they? will realize the race-related challenges that await them and the limited opportunities they will have simply because they are African-American The narrator also implies that many of his students may already be using drugs, just like. his brother Sonny was at that age and that maybe drugs "will do more for them than algebra could" (Baldwin, 123). As Sonny and the narrator are both in a taxi heading to Harlem, the narrator once again references this darkness, describing that the streets "beginning to grow dark with black people" (Baldwin, 129). The narrator also notes the fact that it is not. much about Harlem has changed since he and Sonny's childhood, stating that "...houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we had once smothered in those houses , took to the streets for light and air, and found themselves surrounded by disaster” (Baldwin, 128). Ironically, Sonny and the narrator were lucky enough to escape and flee Harlem and never return when they both enlisted in the army, but somehow they all two ended up here. Although, in some way, the narrator seems to have escaped the inevitable darkness by not falling into drug addiction, he realizes that his children now face the same darknesses and challenges that he faced in the past, and that this inevitable cycle continues from generation to generation. "The outer darkness is what the old people talk about. That's what they come from. That's what they endure. The child knows that they won't speak anymore because if he knows too much about what happened to them, he will know too much, too soon, about what will happen to him” (Baldwin, 131). personalized from our expert writers Get a custom essay The feeling of certainty of what is destined to happen shows that these individuals have given themselves over to darkness They have chosen to face the darkness with silence because they fear it. not being able to do anything about it..