Music as Survival in I Cheerfully Refuse: Healing, Resistance, and Hope

Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse places music at the heart of its survival narrative. The bass guitar is more than an instrument—it is a lifeline. Across a dystopian landscape where libraries are defunded, reading is viewed with suspicion, and the wealthy commodify human life, the act of playing music becomes a defiant assertion of humanity. The novel argues that music heals emotional wounds, resists oppression, and binds characters to memory and hope. Yet Enger also acknowledges the limits of this power: music cannot prevent death, cannot undo cruelty, and can even be co-opted by the powerful. This analysis traces the theme of music as survival through three key plot arcs, examines its connection to characters and symbols, and addresses its inherent contradictions.

The Healing Resonance of the Bass

The novel’s protagonist, Rainy, is a bass player who learned a philosophy called “first do no harm” from his teacher Diego. This approach treats music as a form of non-maleficence—a way to calm, stabilize, and restore rather than to harm or display. The opening chapters establish this healing function. When Rainy’s friend Labrino arrives in distress about the Tashi Comet, Rainy sets aside his own skepticism to play his bass. The music “lifts his spirits,” and Labrino leaves revived. Rainy’s playing is not performance but presence; it soothes a man haunted by a missing daughter, a failed marriage, and the aftermath of an assault.

A more profound test of music’s healing power occurs in Chapter 9. Labrino, dying, asks Rainy to play one last song. Rainy retrieves his bass and plays a tender rock standard, a “hymn for the weathered suitor.” As he plays, the music conjures a vision of the young Labrino, full of “avid hopes and abundant plans.” Even after Labrino’s death, the music allows Rainy to perceive the beauty that his friend had never lost. The scene echoes the myth of Orpheus, whom Rainy references when teaching children: “early maestro Orpheus playing dates in hell to free his girl.” In a world where the powerful treat humans as disposable, music becomes a way to honor the inner life of the dying.

Music as Protection and Resistance

In Chapter 7, Rainy uses music to protect a vulnerable child. Tonio, a boy with a cleft in his forehead and a high score on the “Feral Comportment Continuum,” is ostracized and physically attacked by classmates. Rainy abandons his planned lesson and instead plays “sonorous notes on the fat strings,” inviting the children to touch the fretboard and turn the tuning knobs. This act of musical distraction temporarily defuses the violence. More important, it establishes a bond: Tonio later slips out to Rainy, and Rainy declares that Tonio is under his protection.

Yet the scene also introduces a crucial tension. Music does not transform the bullies; it only pauses their cruelty. The teacher Cora herself “mirrored their cruelty—no, she steered it.” Rainy’s subsequent vow—“protection is the promise you can’t make”—reveals music’s limitation. It is a refuge, not a fortress. This tension deepens later when Rainy cannot protect Tonio or anyone else from the forces that ultimately destroy his world. The bass is no shield against the bombing of Lark’s bookshop or the abduction of Sol.

Nonetheless, music remains a tool of resistance. On the ship Posterity, Rainy is forced to play for the tyrannical Werryck, who suffers from chronic insomnia. Werryck returns Rainy’s bass in Chapter 29, saying, “It seems proper you should have this back for now.” Rainy recognizes that his playing is being used for the old man’s comfort, but he also knows that playing keeps him alive. In Chapter 34, while playing a hymn, Rainy appeals for the twelve squelettes stranded on a raft. Werryck refuses, but Rainy continues playing through the night, hoping the sound might reach the people in the Shambles below: “Nothing I could do but play, to coax what I could for as long as I could.” The act of playing becomes a small rebellion, a way to maintain humanity in an inhumane place.

Connection to Memory and Hope

Music in the novel serves as a bridge to lost loved ones and to a future worth pursuing. After Lark’s death, Rainy retreats to his sailboat Flower and plays alone. The bass “conjured a picture” of Labrino; now it calls Lark to mind. In Chapter 15, as Rainy trembles with rage and hatred, he takes up his bass and finds a slow progression. His playing attracts a flock of seabirds that settle on the deck, “so soothing was their company.” The birds appear as unexpected comfort, a natural response to music that hints at harmony beyond human conflict.

When Rainy escapes Posterity in Chapter 36, he retrieves his bass from Werryck’s quarters. It is one of only three things he takes—along with the book I Cheerfully Refuse and Sol. The bass represents continuity: it carries the touch of Lark, the teachings of Diego, the memory of Tonio, and the promise of a life beyond oppression. Later, in Chapter 38, Rainy sees the Tashi Comet and hears a new bassist, Rachel, playing at a festival. The music and comet together signal that the world, though broken, still holds beauty. Rainy “steers home, thinking he might dance.” Music here is not just survival but the possibility of joy.

Complexity and Contradiction

Enger does not romanticize music’s power. Werryck also uses music to control Rainy: “I hope you’ll play… Get your hands back, as they say.” The bass becomes a bargaining chip, a condition for better treatment. Music cannot erase the fact that Werryck is a murderer who has imprisoned hundreds. It cannot bring back Lark, who was killed by a young patriot named Large Beef after he threw a bomb into her bookshop. Rainy’s rage after her death manifests as shaking—“my organs trying to get out”—the same hands that play the bass are also filled with a desire for vengeance.

The novel even questions whether reading, a parallel “dark art” to music, is worth the risk. In Chapter 5, the narrator reflects that “the perfect book remains unread.” Yet music, like literature, offers a “rope ladder you climbed with knees and elbows out of whatever dragged you down.” The distinction is that music is felt in the body: “when it thunders you know your chest is shaking.” Survival here is not about defeating the system but about maintaining the capacity to feel, to remember, and to connect.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Rainy’s playing for Labrino in Chapter 9 demonstrate music as a form of healing?
   Rainy plays the song Labrino requests at the moment of his death. The music allows Rainy to see the “youthful Labrino inside the aging one,” reanimating the hope and beauty that grief had buried. Playing becomes a way to honor a friend and to process his own anguish.

2. In what way does the scene with Tonio and the music class reveal both the power and limits of music as protection?
   Music temporarily calms the children and distracts them from bullying Tonio, but it cannot change their deeper cruelty or the teacher’s complicity. Rainy’s later admission that “protection is the promise you can’t make” underscores the fragility of music’s shield.

3. Why does Rainy retrieve his bass guitar before leaving Posterity in Chapter 36?
   The bass is a symbol of his identity and his connection to loved ones—Lark, Labrino, Tonio. Taking it means he refuses to let Werryck define his life. It is a practical act of survival (he will need to play again) and a moral one (he will not leave his soul behind).

4. How does Werryck’s use of music complicate the theme of music as resistance?
   Werryck returns the bass and demands that Rainy play for him, turning music into a tool of compliance. Rainy plays to stay alive and to surreptitiously support the twelve on the raft, but he is still a captive. The same music that heals can also be used to pacify and control.

5. What role does the Tashi Comet play alongside the theme of music in the novel’s final chapter?
   The comet appears as a celestial counterpart to music: both are phenomena that inspire awe and hope. Rainy sees the comet after hearing Rachel play, and it prompts him to think of dancing. Together, comet and music suggest that even after devastation, the world remains capable of wonder.

Conclusion

I Cheerfully Refuse treats music not as an escape from suffering but as a way of enduring it. Rainy’s bass guitar is a talisman of survival: it soothes the dying, protects the vulnerable, resists the powerful, and connects the living to the dead. Yet Leif Enger refuses to oversimplify. Music can be manipulated, its power temporary, its protection incomplete. What endures is the act itself—the stubborn choice to play, to listen, to remember. In a world that “counted on” things to go away, music remains a thread that cannot be severed.