He thought that perhaps Sonny was just too young or too high on drugs to understand what life was about. Finally, the third view changed was the narrator's responsibility towards Sonny. Before their mother died, the narrator promised her that he would take it upon himself to take care of Sonny. The narrator viewed Sonny as a responsibility he had, because of the promise made to his mother; he felt he owed it to his mother to take care of Sonny. Therefore, whenever he did something for Sonny it was because his mother had wanted him to, not because he cared about Sonny. During the story, a long separation brought the narrator into his second stage of thinking, and changed his views of Sonny. The narrator recognized that Sonny wasn't just a kid any more. Yet he didn't see him as a man either. "He was a man by then, of course, but I wasn't willing to see it." (177). He saw Sonny as a teenager of sorts. Sonny dressed strangely, became family with strange friends, and listened to still stranger music. In the narrator's eyes, Sonny foolishly thought he knew everything. Even though the narrator's views on Sonny's manhood changed, during the second stage, his feelings about Sonny's sense of reality didn't. The narrator still viewed Sonny as if he were on drugs. "He carried himself, loose and dreamlike all the time, .and his music seemed to be merely an excuse for the life he led. It sounded just that weird and disordered.""(177). He thought that Sonny had been driven even farther from reality than before. He thought that Sonny's view of reality was so distorted that he might as well have been dead. He began fighting regularly with Sonny, "Then he stood up and he told me not to worry about him anymore in life, that as he was dead as far as I was concerned.""(178). During this time in which the narrator thought Sonny was acting as a teenager he forsook his promise all together. The narrator did not communicate with his brother at all for some time.
