Pat Conroy Beach music - Essay Example

Character of Jack McCall in “Beach Music” Jack McCall is the protagonist and the narrator of “Beach Music”. During the of the story, his character undergoes several changes. The narration takes the reader through the various stages in the author’s life. The first stage is his childhood, which is abnormal because of his alcoholic father and his fake mother. The atmosphere of constant quarrels and tension turns him into a self protective, isolated human being who is rather cold and unable to adequately express his emotions. The second stage his character goes through us escapism and an inability to face up to the guilt he feels that he may have become partly responsible for his wife’s suicide. This leads him to deny having a family and isolates him with his daughter in Rome, for five long years. During the last stage of the story, through the illness of his mother, he is able to finally face up to his inner demons and rediscover his sense of identity and belonging in his family. When the story commences, Jack McCall is intent on fleeing the memories of his wife’s tragic death. He wants to take his daughter away with him to Italy after a custody battle with his in-laws. South Carolina is the place where both he and his wife Shyla had grown up together, but now the place is rife with tragic memories of his wife and unpleasant ones of the custody battle with his in-laws, who blame him for Shyla’s death. Crazed with grief, they question his finances, his sanity, his reputation in the community and his relationship with their beloved daughter who is now dead. The author’s state of mind is reflected in the narration when he states: “I was serious about needing some time to heal and giving my soul a much needed rest.” (Conroy). Jack McCall’s trip to Italy is an attempt to escape from his painful memories and to raise his daughter in a peaceful atmosphere, as far away as possible from South Carolina – Rome, a place that is notable in one aspect that matters greatly to McCall, it has only low bridges and no high bridges at all, like the Silas Pearlman Bridge in Charleston, South Carolina. Jack has a distinct aversion to the past and its pain filled memories and when he is questioned about it, he expresses his sentiments very clearly, “I’m not fond of my past. It fills me with horror to think about it.” (Conroy). This clearly reveals his reluctance to resurrect his past in any manner because it is replete with anguished memories of his wife and her suicide. He feels that moving away from the site of his pain will provide some element of relief from the pain of his wife’s suicide and also enable him to protect his daughter from the family’s tumultuous past as well as the difficulties that he is experiencing in coping with that past. Not even religion is able to offer him a solace and a means of coping and McCall dismisses it as follows: “Religion’s strange to me. I grew up Catholic, yet the church hurt me…..I’ve lost the gift of faith” (Conroy). The bitterness of the custody battle has generated feelings of suffocation in the author, which he seeks to dispel by moving away to Rome. But his attitude changes five years later, when he is forced to return to South Carolina to deal with the illness of his mother. McCall has not had a happy childhood and he describes his mother as the woman “who ruined my life and made it impossible for me to find happiness during this lifetime.” (Conroy). He had always perceived his mother as a smiling liar of a woman, a woman who had faked the art of mothering as she coped with her husband’s drinking habits. But her illness forces everyone to face up to the realization that she is human and mortal. The author realizes that finally in her life, his mother was “not faking. Who would’ve ever thought that Mom was mortal?” The mother’s illness also bring Jack into contact with all his siblings, and as the family gathers together and he begins to get to know his siblings again, Jack’s previous desire to escape South Carolina and his family roots undergoes a transformation. The character of McCall changes as he begins to question whether he made the right decision in choosing to cut himself off from his family ties and also isolate his daughter from the knowledge of her wide ranging family roots. He had made the decision earlier that the South was not good enough a place to raise his daughter, and had declared himself a man without a family. But now he begins to question whether he “had rendered her a great service or cut her off from those powerful forces that were her legacy of blood. There was an inalienable beauty and affirmation in this drawing together and it moved me.” (Conroy). It is at this time that he remembers how his family rallied around him after the tragic death of his wife, his brother Dallas taking on his case for nothing and his entire family testifying on his behalf. He recalls the bout of depression that he had sunk into after Shyla’s death and is finally able to face up to the guilt he feels deep within himself, for contributing in part to his wife’s death. He is also able to face up to his own cruelty in walking out on the family that had supported him to deny their existence for five years in Rome. In facing up to his regrets and guilt, he is finally able to cry the tears that he was unable to cry after Shyla’s death. He is also able to face up to who he is and his inextricable link with the South. When Jack McCall returns to deal with his mother’s illness, he also discovers himself and his own identity and his attitude towards South Caroline changes completely. He realizes that he had been trying to deny his own identity and Leah’s as well. He realizes that he “felt ties to this river, to this town, to this open indwelling sky, to everything around me. I had taken Leah away from what we both were. I had given her everything except the South.” (Conroy). The return to South Carolina and the process of going through his mother’s illness, come and recovery brings Jack back into the family fold again. As a child, Jack had been a terrified little altar boy, who often used to hide near the staircase when his parents started quarrelling. Jack states, “I did not wish to pass my knowledge of cold inarticulateness on to Leah. Deep in my heart, I thought that it may have killed Shyla.”(Conroy). His traumatic childhood had made Jack cold and unable to express his emotions, and he is able to realize that this coldness might have been partly responsible for Shyla’s death. But when he returns home from Rome, he is finally able to make peace with his past and find affection for his family again. He is able to rediscover his roots and his family, and thereby unlock his own emotions and his ability to express them, thereby also facing up to the person he is. Thus, during the course of the story, the character of Jack McCall goes through some changes. During the first stage, he is a normal child, seeking love and affection from his family, but deprived of it because of the unhappy family background. During the second stage, he is a man running away from his roots and his family, seeking to deny their existence and his own roots. But his mother’s illness makes him realize that he had made a mistake in seeking to isolate himself and his daughter in Rome and he rediscovers his own identity and how much he belongs in the South, in the family fold. Reference * Conroy, Pat. “Beach Music.” Read More