The Theme Of Avoidance In Poker Night

Authors use complex characters to create the theme of avoidance so the reader can understand how not confronting their problems can lead to greater conflict.

John Updike uses the narrator in Poker Night to create the theme of avoidance to show the reader that time cannot help escape a conflict. After finding out that he has cancer, the narrator must go to the drugstore to pick up his prescription, then he had to make a decision if he was going to go home and explain his condition to his wife or if he should avoid the conversation until a later time. “I wanted to be sharing this with the wife but then they were counting on me to make six and a few hours couldn’t make much difference. Bad news keeps: Isn’t that what the old people used to say?”

When Sonny came back to New York, he and the narrator met up after not seeing each other in a while. In response to the narrator telling him that his kids were anxious to see him, Sonny replied, “‘Oh, come on. You know they don't remember me.’ ‘Are you kidding? Of course they remember you.’ He grinned again. We got into a taxi. We had a lot to say to each other, far too much to know how to begin” (Baldwin 6). Both Sonny and the narrator knew they needed to talk about Sonny’s heroin usage, but they didn’t know where to start and the narrator struggled to understand the new Sonny. Therefore, they decided to avoid the conversation until a later time because neither of them had the courage to discuss it now. The reader should understand that it is easy to avoid things that are difficult to start. Later, Sonny brought the narrator to a nightclub where he performed a song with some other men in his “band”. “And Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his” (Baldwin 24). Finally, the narrator understood his brother, Sonny. He realized that when he finally opened his ears and tried to listen to what he had to say, he could understand where he was coming from. If he would have tried to listen and understand Sonny from the beginning, it would have made everything a lot easier. The author used this to show the audience that if they continue to push things back, it will be more difficult to understand them. The reader should also understand that there is no way to truly understand someone else without fully and wholeheartedly listening to them and what they are trying to communicate. In Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin used Sonny to create the theme of avoidance to show the reader how pushing