Music

Music plays a crucial role in the novel. It is the great passion of Simon’s life. Music brings Simon love, friendship, and money. It has an almost spiritual significance in Simon’s life, and acts as a reminder of his greatness.

In the first place, music is what brings Simon, Damon, Doroteo, and Patrick all together in the first place. They meet in the army, at the end-of-war celebration. The narrator says, “Thus they solidified as a group of musicians do, or perhaps their minds and thoughts precipitated out of the military suspension in which they had been held and so they once again became servants of music and not of the state” (29). The musicians clearly do not care who fought for the Confederate side versus the Federal side, showing how these labels are, in fact, arbitrary and hold little power over these people who...