A family consists of many different issues in itself such as honesty, happiness and trust as well as pain and suffering, but without the individuals within a family, people would not be able to make it through certain times of need. In "Sonny's Blues," the narrator cannot deal with Sonny's pain and due to the fact that he doesn't want pain like that to become a part of his life he does not write to Sonny in prison until he has experienced a loss of his own. The narrator's little girl dies of polio, and at that point he reaches out to the only person who might be able to understand that kind of anguish, Sonny. The author implies that Sonny got addicted to heroin because there was so much rage and pain and misery inside him that he couldn't express it. The only time it was forgotten was when he played the piano, and yet he still had not perfected his skills enough to allow the music to flow out of his soul through his fingers in a way that would heal him inside and getting high seemed easier. When Sonny talks about the pain inside him, he brings up the metaphor of cold again, "It's terrible sometimes, inside.that's what's the trouble. You walk there streets, black and funky and cold, and there's really not a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out - that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen. Sometimes you"ll do anything to play, even cut your mother's throat (Baldwin 100)". In the end Sonny's brother was able to understand his pain and help him. Families are who people depend in all aspects of life and sometimes it takes life threatening mistakes for people to come to this realization. .