Contemporary Country Music: A Songbook

The experiment in this piece is obviously within the form as a Songbook. The form works as reflective of the musical motif. With John coming back from the war, there is the common sense of detachment and fear of change. He finds himself in a country he fought with his life to save that isn’t the same country he left, at least to some degree. This is emphasized in his implicit complaint about the newer country music played at the bar. Music is again important in the last scene, as his sister tells him about a song she relates to him about a temporarily suicidal soldier. This is possibly hinting at some of John’s feelings, as earlier in the narrative he expresses a desire to buy a gun when drunk.  When the form is taken with the title as a contemporary songbook, the implication being that the entire story is unpleasant to John, evident in his apparent attempts to escape online and then at a bar from his family that loves him. There seems to be an underlying message that John is trying to escape his current life, like in the song his sister mentions at the end. However, the form, only including spoken words, creates confusion about the speaker. It would be more helpful to definitively identify different speakers, as most could be interpreted as the mother or father speaking and create too much of an emphasis on another character, not John.