Summary

The narrator and Sonny ride along between the green park and the streets of their childhood. The housing projects, the dingy houses, and the boys with no hope are the same as they were during the brothers’ childhood. Although both the narrator and Sonny somehow escaped Harlem, they are somehow seeking the part of themselves they had left behind.

The narrator and his wife live in a housing project, but by choice, as it is close to where he teaches. The narrator worries that by bringing Sonny to his house, he is bringing him back into the danger Sonny had been trying to escape.

Analysis

Sonny asks to be driven alongside the green park; what he really wants to see are the gritty housing projects like the ones where he grew up. The buildings jut out of the streets “like rocks in the middle of a...