To Hell with Dying

The guitar is a symbol for Mr. Sweet’s creative soul; it embodies his history and identity. The guitar is referenced in scenarios where Mr. Sweet is sharing his story or expressing his emotions through his “sweet, sad, wonderful songs” (Paragraph 7), which fall within the genre of the blues music. This genre was developed largely within the African American community and reflected many of their struggles in the United States at the time. Originating in the southern US, blues songs centered around religion and work. Mr. Sweet liked to play “Sweet Georgia Brown,” a song about a devastatingly beautiful woman that likely relates to how he sees his past love. The inclusion of the type of music references cultural staples of Black culture at the time, but it also alludes to how he is limited by his identity as a Black man. His inability to pursue his ambitions due to his race is partially what inspires his guitar playing in the first place.

The guitar is a tool with which Mr. Sweet communicated his feelings to the community, and sometimes he would cry, though this seems to only occur around the children. This suggests that the guitar is a gateway to his soul, devoid of socially constructed barriers of age and gender.