Blue Melody

“Blue Melody” Analysis

"Blue Melody" is a short story by J. D. Salinger which was first published in the September 1948. It is the tragic tale of an African-American jazz singer; the story was inspired by the life of Bessie Smith and was originally titled "Scratchy Needle on a Phonograph Record." Cosmopolitan changed the title to "Blue Melody" without Salinger 's consent. It is possible to interpret the original title of the story. Stratchy needle may mean time and experience of a person which scrape our life, and in this context life is a phonograph with its own track.

The story is told from the point of view of an observer, who participates in this story. He is an objective narrator with a low degree of omniscience for he just relates the story once told to him by a man he traveled with. The narrator tells us the story of one man; his name is Rudford, who tells him his own story on their way from Luxemburg City to the front at Halzhoffen, Germany.

The time of setting is the second World War,” mid-winter of 1944” which chronologically should go in the end of the story. The narrator gives us a clear picture of those hard times: an overcrowded GI truck, a distance of four flat tires, three (reported) cases of frozen feet, one case of incipient pneumonia, the forty-odd men jammed in the truck, . These remarks about the distance and such cases which happened with people are not accident, and only few of them were reported; there is more to it than meets the eye. The author wants to show the burden of war. The narrator describes what he sees from the corner. He is different from the others. He even doesn’t want to evoke a conversation with any of the soldiers. He just observes the scene of their pedestrian life. An absolute darkness in this truck makes the atmosphere more tragic and tense by the usage of dry, gloomy verbs and the choice of words help to create such sarcastically tone: truck fairly rocked with persiflage, night abruptly fell and the black-out

References: to particular dates as 1944 – and 1942 draw the parallel between these period of time. We may speak about conflicts in the short story. They are not really explicit and significant in the scope of the story itself. It 's possible to point out several external conflicts: the World War II – it is mentioned as a background for the narration in the beginning of the story, racial conflict, mentioned only in one sentence: “I 'm sorry but the rules of the hospital do not permit Negro patients, I 'm very sorry.”, a conflict between Lida Louise and a man, perhaps Endicott Wilson, a conflict which affects the woman 's life, but which not emphasized in the short story though. As we see, there are no significant conflicts between the major characters of the story since the characters are flat. Speaking about their language we should notice that it’s vernacular English (“He 's a fella.”, “Naa. You gotta really haul off.”, “Like fun we are!”) which contributes to the image of the characters and to the setting – Southern state. Charles 's and Lida 's speech is in Black English (“Ain 't that fine!”, “Y 'all come on in.”, “You chillen can he 'p me pull 'em up.”, “Uncle, you hear what this here ole Margar-reet say?”, “These here kiddies like that kinda song real good.”) which contributes to the probability of the characters and to the setting as well. We may say that a higher degree of the descriptive focus is given to an abstract description due to the subject of music, being the major concern in the story (“effort”, “eagerness”, “accent”, “sense”, “boyhood”, “indefatigable”, “looked”, “listened”, “announcement”, “song”, “chord”, “voice”, “adored”, “deified”), physical description is also present in the story (“truck”, “hospital”, “mom 's apple pie”, “ice-cold beer”, “neck”, “waist”, “chewing gum”, “cigarette”). If we consider speech and thought presentation, it is obvious that direct speech, free direct speech and indirect thought presentations prevail combined with indirect speech presentation and narrative report of a speech and thought act, which shows that narrator is apparently in partial control of report. (IS: “He said it was about an hour 's drive from Memphis.”: ”Peggy said, "Can I wake him up this time? Huh, Rudford?”; FDS: "Who 's he?" "He 's a fella. Plays the piano on Willard Street. He 's a friend of mine;NRSA: “He told me next about a day in November.”; “Peggy decided that when she grew up she would be a war nurse.”; IT: “Rudford considered the remark disgusting.”; NRTA: “Rudford and a few others reasonably suspected that her quitting had something--or everything--to do with the corner-of-Beale-Street incident”). I would also say that with the use of compound adjectives (hook-and-ladder gin, a too-much gal, home-for-Christmas crowd) and parallel constructions (“...but that wasn 't why you went. You went there because Black Charles played the piano... ...and he was always at the piano when you came in, and he was always there when you had to go home.”; occur frequently in the text and attract reader’s attention. In connection with the music theme in the short story it 's possible to say that compound adjectives and parallel constructions and repetitions give certain rhythm to the parts of the story where they are used and create some musical effect in the text. So, the short story “Blue melody” is the only story where J.D. Salinger uses music material and it still reflects the main traits of his other works – children and wartime motive. So, the Black music still rouse senses and still popular among all generations. This music makes me shiver from its melody and voice vibrations.