Baldwin uses several references to darkness and light in his story, "Sonny's Blues." One of the first is when the narrator, Sonny's brother, finds out about his arrest by reading the newspaper. On his subway ride home, he reads of Sonny's arrest by the "swinging lights of the subway car while "the darkness raged outside." Baldwin uses this imagery of darkness to illustrate the narrator's fear and depression concerning Sonny's situation. The imagery of "swinging lights  may be a reference to the coming of understanding the narrator will have at the end of the story. Another imagery of darkness Baldwin uses is when the narrator is describing the students in his class. "All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives ¦ and the darkness of the movies. This was in reference to the environment that they found themselves growing up. A tough city full of crime and poverty. One other imagery of darkness is in the paragraph that begins, "This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive.  In this paragraph the narrator is describing a memory from childhood of when his mama was younger and there was a gathering of "church folks and relatives talking after the big Sunday dinner.  The suffering of African Americans is referred to by, "The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. One can draw from this the gloom, despair, and hardships that have marked their lives. It is further brought home by the final sentence in the paragraph, "because if he knows too much about what's happening to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him." Before becoming a writer, Baldwin was a preacher and in his story "Sonny's Blues," there is a hint of that. The biblical stories of Cain and Able from Genesis and Luke's parable of the Prodigal Son seem to be the foundation for "Sonny's Blues. Several times during the story one can