Drugs are one of the themes in this story which shows the impact of both the user and their loved ones. There is no doubt that heroin destroys lives and families, but it offers a momentary escape from the characters' oppressive environment and serves as a coping mechanism to help deal with the human suffering around it. Suffering is seen as a contributing factor to his drug addiction, and suffering is linked to the narrator's daughter's loss of Grace. The story opens with the narrator feeling ice in his veins when he reads about Sonny's arrest for heroin possession. The two brothers manage to patch things up knowing that his younger brother has an addiction. At the end of the story she still offers him an alcoholic drink because she has accepted her brother for who he really is. Harlem is the setting for this story and has been a hub for drug and alcohol abuse. The opening event of this story shows that Sonny is still trapped in this world. Sonny says he just sells drugs to make money and says he doesn't use them anymore. In the story the brother begins to see that Sonny has his own problems, but tries to help the people around him by using music to comfort him.