Sonny's Blues The Home Quotes
How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
But houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster. (72)
Home isn't always the comforting place we'd like it to be. Sometimes it feels claustrophobic, like a prison.
Quote #2
Yet, as the cab moved uptown through streets which seemed, with a rush, to darken with dark people, and as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was the part of ourselves which had been left behind. (72)
Is it ever really possible to leave "home" behind? Although he and Sonny are now grown men, the narrator realizes that they're each trying to find the piece of themselves that will always remain "home," no matter where they go or how old they get.
Quote #3
And I'd known this avenue all my life, but it seemed to me again, as it had on the day I'd first heard about Sonny's trouble, filled with a hidden menace which was its very breath of life. (73)
The familiarity of home can quickly turn to a sense of danger and destruction. This "home" is precisely what Sonny tries to escape with drugs, and even though it's a place he and the narrator know well, there seems to be an unknown danger lurking around every corner.
Quote #4
We live in a housing project. It hasn't been up long. A few days after it was up it seemed uninhabitably new, now, of course, it's already run down. (76)
This is "home" in the literal sense, where the narrator and his family live. When it was new, it didn't feel comfortable to live in – perhaps it was too spotless and perfect. But that newness didn't last long, and now it already feels run-down. There is no happy medium here.
Quote #5
The beat-looking grass lying around isn't enough to make their lives green, the hedges will never hold out the streets, and they know it. (76)
The people who live in the narrator's Harlem neighborhood can't even find refuge within their own homes. They can try to spruce them up, try to pretend they're in a comfortable, safe place, but there's no getting around the bleakness of the outside world.
Quote #6
"Safe!" my father grunted, whenever Mama suggested trying to move to a neighborhood which might be safer for children. "Safe, hell! Ain't no place safe for kids, nor nobody." (78)
What a completely devastating thing to hear as a kid! Not even the one place where children should feel safe and protected can offer that to them. The idea of "home" as we might traditionally think of it doesn't exist for these kids.
Quote #7
He hopes that the hand which stokes his forehead will never stop – will never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk. (81)
This is an example of "home" more as a state of being than a physical place. The scene of the child lying in his mother's lap, getting his head rubbed and listening to the adults talk, is almost magical. It's more the act than the place that makes this "home."
Quote #8
When I came back, nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, I was just – older. (218)
"Home" doesn't change for Sonny after he grows up. It's almost like it's been waiting for him, like a time capsule, while he's grown and changed.
Quote #9
Yet, it was clear that, for them, I was only Sonny's brother. Here, I was in Sonny's world. Or rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood. (229)
The nightclub is truly Sonny's "home" now. He is comfortable here, in his element. He has created a home for himself outside of the place where he sleeps and eats. He's accepted and admired here, and that's what makes this "home" for him.
Quote #10
And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky. (238)
A feeling of being "home" can be momentary and fleeting, especially when the outside world is so bleak. The narrator senses that the feeling of being "at home" can only last so long before you have to go back and confront the real world.