Beach Music

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Background

Historical Context: Poland During World War II

A few important characters in Beach Music lived in Poland during World War II. Their stories play a significant role in the plot, even though the main events of the novel are set in the 1980s.

In 1939, Adolf Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland in the first European battle of World War II. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union also invaded Poland, thus dividing Poland in half between German and Soviet control. The Soviet Union and Germany had a peace agreement until 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, forcing its leader Stalin to join the Allies. Many Polish citizens died under both German and Soviet occupation.

It is estimated that Nazis and Nazi sympathizers murdered 90 percent of Polish Jews during the Holocaust; some of the most infamously horrific extermination camps—Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor—are in Poland. Many non-Jewish Poles and prisoners of war were also murdered in these camps.

In Poland and other countries Nazi forces occupied during World War II, German authorities moved Jewish populations into enclosed districts or neighborhoods. These districts were called ghettos. Living conditions in the ghettos were harsh; residents were subject to debilitating poverty, poor sanitary conditions, starvation, and overcrowding. The Nazis appointed Jewish councils, called Judenrat, to administer the ghettos. The council members carried out the orders of German authorities and were required to administer tasks like deporting residents to work or to extermination camps.

Socio-Historical Context: The Vietnam War and the Antiwar Movement

The main plot of Beach Music is impacted by events that took place during the Vietnam War (1955-1975). A few of the novel’s main characters participated in the antiwar movement, protesting US involvement in the Vietnam War.

The primary conflict during the Vietnam War was between the communist forces of North Vietnam and the anti-communist forces of South Vietnam. The US supported South Vietnam, while the Soviet Union and China supported the North. Thus, the war became a proxy conflict of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union.

The American public was divided over the war. While some Americans supported US involvement, organized opposition to the war began in the 1960s, corresponding with an escalation of the conflict and the increasing journalist access to the front lines. The federal government instituted a military draft in 1964; negative response to the draft helped spur the antiwar movement.

College students were a large demographic of the antiwar movement. Organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had chapters on campuses across the country, encouraging students to coordinate with each other and to participate actively in protests. Campus-based protests swelled after the Kent State shootings in May of 1970, when the Ohio National Guard fired on a student rally, killing four students and wounding others.

Authorial and Geographical Context: South Carolina

Pat Conroy (1945-2016) lived in the American South for much of his life. Southern culture and geography influence many of his works, including Beach Music. Although Beach Music is a work of fiction, events and characters in the novel mirror biographical details from the author’s life.

Conroy grew up in a military family that moved around a lot before they settled in Beaufort, South Carolina, for the Conroy’s high school years. The author attended the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina where students are subject to a rigid system of hierarchy and discipline. These details are reflected in the character of Jordan Elliot; Conroy’s father—like Jordan’s—was physically and emotionally abusive.

The geography and the culture of South Carolina, Pat Conroy’s long-time home, are prevalent throughout the novel. The novel is titled for a sub-genre of music also known as Carolina beach music, which was born in the 1950s coastal towns where young people liked to dance to R&B. At that time, the South was still segregated, so music associated with Black performers, like R&B and the blues, was not aired on the radio or played in businesses in white communities. The exception was in some beach communities, where business owners realized the popularity of R&B, the blues, and rock’n’roll among the younger generation. This popularity inspired beach music, a new sub-genre from artists like The Drifters, stylistically similar R&B but with a fast tempo that is fun to dance to.

The South Carolina “low country” is the dominant setting in Beach Music. The region is characterized by coastal salt marshes and also includes a chain of islands called the Sea Islands, of which Hilton Head is the most well-known. The low country is home to much biodiversity, including loggerhead sea turtles. The sea turtles, a threatened species that nests on the coast, are a symbol for home and maternal love in the novel.