Music in WAYGWHYB

As I worked on the Bob Dylan reference for the WAYGWHYB discussion, I began to realize how many comments there are in the story about music. I love music and believe that it can touch the soul. The story shows how music influences a person’s thinking. For example, “her face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music.” (511) The quote suggests that Connie is very susceptible to music, in this case making her feel good. In the next paragraph that describes being taken home by June’s friend’s father, “She couldn’t hear the music at this distance.” (511) The reader is given the impression that Connie is “back to reality” instead of responding to the music.

Connie has become sexually active and associates music with sexual feelings, “But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face, but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music.” (511) This theme of sexuality being equated with or invoked by music is referenced in the scene right before Arnold arrives, Connie is “bathed in the glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music” (512). Once Arnold arrives “now Connie began to hear the music,” (513) suggesting she is excited by Arnold’s attention. Right before she pulls back from Arnold, the sexual association of music is described, “that sleepy dreamy smile that all boys used to get across ideas they didn’t want to put into words…and she recognized the way he tapped one fist against the other in homage to the perpetual music behind him.” Arnold expects Connie to agree to sex with him—even if he has to use threats and violence to get it. Arnold says, “…what else is there for a girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in?” (520) The last reference to music comes a few pages before the end of the story as Connie’s interest in sex is gone and as her fate is decided.