Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Music and Meaning in Ron Rash’s World Made Straight
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In The Sociology of Rock Music, Simon Frith considers S.N. Eisenstadt’s observation that most youth, sensitive to their marginal social status, seek autonomy and self-esteem through peer groups and symbols of pride and self–assertion such as rock music while undergoing the socialization processes that prepare them to assume adult responsibilities (25). Nevertheless, he concludes that for most, music is less symbolically meaningful than it is background accompaniment to their leisure activities.
While Ron Rash’s World Made Straight, set in the same year Frith published his book, may initially seem to be depicting Frith’s findings about music as background accompaniment for the activities of young men in economically and socially depressed circumstances, the novel actually does far more. Through the seventeen-year-old Travis, Ron Rash also illustrates music’s capacity to contribute to the social construction of the self, particularly as a vehicle of rebellion against authority, and to aid in emotional self-regulation. Moreover, through other characters in the novel, Rash also shows how music can function as a tool of destructive manipulation. Perhaps most significantly, however, Rash points to the way in which music aids listeners in processing grief and other strong emotions and by helping them articulate and even begin to satisfy the longing to inhabit a “world made straight.”
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Martha Greene Eads, professor of English at Eastern Mennonite University, grew up in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge mountains and studied literature and theology at Wake Forest University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Durham (UK). Before coming to EMU, she taught at the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women and at Valparaiso University in Indiana, where she held a Lilly Fellowship in Humanities and the Arts from 2001-2003. Her research and teaching interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century drama, English modernism, and contemporary Southern fiction, and her articles on those topics have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Christianity and Literature, The Cresset, Modern Drama, The Southern Quarterly, and Theology.
Music and Meaning in Ron Rash’s World Made Straight
In The Sociology of Rock Music, Simon Frith considers S.N. Eisenstadt’s observation that most youth, sensitive to their marginal social status, seek autonomy and self-esteem through peer groups and symbols of pride and self–assertion such as rock music while undergoing the socialization processes that prepare them to assume adult responsibilities (25). Nevertheless, he concludes that for most, music is less symbolically meaningful than it is background accompaniment to their leisure activities.
While Ron Rash’s World Made Straight, set in the same year Frith published his book, may initially seem to be depicting Frith’s findings about music as background accompaniment for the activities of young men in economically and socially depressed circumstances, the novel actually does far more. Through the seventeen-year-old Travis, Ron Rash also illustrates music’s capacity to contribute to the social construction of the self, particularly as a vehicle of rebellion against authority, and to aid in emotional self-regulation. Moreover, through other characters in the novel, Rash also shows how music can function as a tool of destructive manipulation. Perhaps most significantly, however, Rash points to the way in which music aids listeners in processing grief and other strong emotions and by helping them articulate and even begin to satisfy the longing to inhabit a “world made straight.”
