Sonny's Blues Suffering Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Paragraph)

Quote #7

You don't know how much I needed to hear from you.  I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn't write.  But now I feel like a man who's been trying to climb out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside.  I got to get outside. (49)

Sonny suffers on multiple levels.  He suffers from his drug addiction and from being stuck in jail. But he also suffers from the knowledge that he's hurt his family and that, because of this, he didn't dare reach out to them even when he needed to the most.

Quote #8

The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about.  It's what they've come from.  It's what they endure.  The child knows they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him. (82)

Here we see how suffering can pass down from one generation to the next.  The parents want to protect the children for as long as they can, but they know that suffering will be an inevitable part of their lives.  But for now, the children can remain blissfully ignorant of what's looming ahead.

Quote #9

I said: "But there's no way not to suffer – is there, Sonny?" (206)

The narrator is resigned to suffering.  He's just accepted it as part of the human condition.