In an argumentative paper, I state Sonny becomes an addictive, jazz musician because of 1950's culture. What could my 3 points be?"Sonny's Blues"...

It seems that your contention is that Sonny's environment is so
difficult for him that he attempts to escape it through his use of heroine. For your points that
will defend the threats that Sonny's environment contains, you may first wish to allude to the
setting of Harlem in the 1950s as an area of darkness. For, as the narrator reflects that Sonny
had probably tried heroine when he was the age of the students that the narrator teaches, he
remarks,

They were
filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which
was now closing in on them, and the darness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other
darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at
any other time, and more
alone.

• This
  darkness of the lives of those in Harlem is alluded to often. In a
  flashback the narrator recalls how his father drank to quiet his fear of the darkness. The
  mother, too, sat quietly as she and the father looked at "something a child can't see." And, as
  the narrator speaks with Sonny's old friend, the narrator senses the menace in the darkness of
  his environment. It is this menace that the parents of Sonny and the narrator have feared in "the
  vivid, killing streets" of their childhood. The darkness is the limits upon the lives of those in
  Harlem.


• These streets of Harlem as
  menace take something from the inhabitants. The narrator recalls how
  the mother said, "It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that get sucked under." Then,
  she told the narrator about his uncle who was killed. The menace is the problem of race.
  


• Finally, there is the suffering that
  one endures in the Harlem of Sonny and his brother. Frequently, the narrator mentions "some
  worry" in Sonny's eyes, a "thoughtfulness" and the music "seemed to be merely an excuse for the
  life he led." It also "makes something real" Sonny tells his brother. But, later the narrator
  finds that the music seems "to soothe a poison out" of the street singers. As he and Sonny
  listen, Sonny remarks,

readability="15">

"While I was downstairs before, on my way here, listening
to that woman sing, it struck me...how much suffering she must have had to go through--to sing
like that...No, there's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning
in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem--well, like
you."

Sonny feels the terrible
darkness, the menace of the streets, and he plays his blues to "soothe a poison out," to get
someone to listen to his expression of suffering and take away his "cup of trembling." Then, he
triumphs, for he is not alone, not in the darkness. His suffering, his artistic expression is
heard and shared. "And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours," the narrator
remarks.