High Fidelity and Music

High Fidelity and Music

In High Fidelity, Rob, the protagonist and narrator, says “I find myself worrying away at that stuff about pop music again, whether I like it because I’m unhappy, or whether I’m unhappy because I like it” (168). It is obvious to the reader that Rob has a very strong relationship to pop music but also that this relationship is not as simple as the either-or dichotomy he describes it as. At first, it is an obsession that is almost pathological; by the end, it is an aid to his relationships and his idea of who he is. Rob’s relationship to music helps us understand Rob as a character through the different ways he uses it to interact in his environment – either as a crutch inhibiting his growth or as a way to aid his self-development.

At the beginning of the novel, music serves as the former. Rob does not know himself. He relies on his relationships with women to define who he is, which basically comes down to if they are willing to sleep with him, he is happy, and if they are not, he wants to know why. In this stage of his life, Rob’s relationship to music is one of dependence; it is more or less a substitution for a healthy sense of self.

One manifestation of this problem is how Rob uses music to take the place of social interaction. For example, instead of expressing interest in a woman through conversation, Rob would make her a mix-tape to show her he likes her. This is what he does with Laura and again with Caroline, the woman who interviews him. When Laura catches him making the tape for this woman, Rob tries to make up an excuse but knows she doesn’t believe it; “she of all people knows what compilation tapes represent” (313). Also, the songs he puts on the tapes are the songs he likes. He obv...

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.... This is how we know he is starting to get an idea of who he is and that he realizes that this is different from who Laura is.

Rob says, “It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can’t afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You’ve got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you’ve got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you’re compelled to start all over again” (169). When music was at Rob’s center, when he was using it to define himself, it was a destructive force. The definition was an illusion, and this strained his relationships. But when he realized he was the one who needed to define himself, music became a symbol of understanding of himself and of his relationship with Laura.