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Moving On "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin is a short story about the past and present life of two brothers. Pain and sorrow is part of their life, and the world surrounding them is viewed very differently by the two brothers. Sonny and his brother learn to deal with their pain, suffering and desire for primacy from Harlem in different avenues. Sonny's brother is wishful of living a life outside his teaching career and has the desire to live life as sonny does, careless and inattentive. Sonny lives life with avoidance and carelessness; he chalks up heroin to escape the caves of life in Harlem. The narrator tells many stories from their childhood to the time they are grown up with the death of their parents how they separated which explains why they are distinct. Sonny and his brother are both in deep search for breakout from filth and bareness of Harlem, in their own ways both characters want to retrieve some of their past to cope with what has happened in their lives and to find a way to go on. The two characters are described in the story when riding away in the cab taking sonny home, “… it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was that part of ourselves which had been left behind".