By accepting that his brother is a drug addict who was dealing in the Harlem streets, he also has to accept that he is somehow involved and that his lifestyle is not as secure as he thinks it is. .
Part of the narrator's lifestyle that he finds a great amount of security in is his job. The narrator's career choice indicates that he values structure and procedures. He finds comfort in having a respectable job and honest lifestyle. He realizes that many of his student s are about the same age as Sonny when he had first tried heroin and says to himself about his students that abuse drugs and Sonny, "Maybe it did more for them than algebra could." (Baldwin 81) Although he doesn't really think that drugs could do more for a person than education, he is beginning to realize that, whether he likes it or wants to accept it, that this is the harsh reality of his surroundings in the Harlem ghetto. "These boys, now, were living as we"d been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against a low ceiling of their actual possibilities." (Baldwin .
81) "At this point in the story his opinion is evidently that Sonny and many of the young students are beaten and he, fortunately, is not." (Riley 56) The day that he learns of Sonny's arrest he stops after classes to listen to his students in the courtyard of the school. It is that day that he realizes that the laughter he is hearing is not the typical laughter of teenage boys, but that the boys "laughter is disenchanted rather than good-humored." (Riley 56) The narrator is impacted by the sounds that he hears in the courtyard because for so long he has shut them out because they were a reminder of the environment that he is amidst. At the end of the day the narrator is given another chance to come to terms with what has happened to his brother.
When the narrator is getting ready to leave he sees one of Sonny's friends standing in the doorway.