I Can't Give You Anything but Love

“I Can't Give You Anything but Love” is invoked as Red’s preferred song and as the clearest musical expression of how those present want to remember him. The choice also exposes a conflict over cultural identity: when the second man mistakes the requested music for something foreign, he insists that Red was American and rejects any performance that would detach Red from that identity.

Red’s Song and Cultural Identity

The song enters the scene when the second man is asked to identify a tune and answers that it is a waltz by Strauss. He immediately corrects the musical direction, objecting to the implication that the music should be foreign or European. His response distinguishes Red from the speaker himself: Red, he says, was American, even if the other man might not be. The song therefore does more than mark a preference. It becomes evidence summoned to establish Red’s cultural belonging, with popular American music standing against the suspicion of foreignness.

A Deliberate Act of Remembrance

The second man requests that the music be changed to “I Can't Give You Anything but Love,” explaining that Red had always liked it. The appeal to Red’s taste gives the song a memorial function without turning it into an abstract tribute. Red’s remembered pleasure is the reason offered for playing it, and the choice keeps his presence attached to a recognizable, lively song rather than to a generalized ceremony. The music allows the absent Red to shape the gathering through the recollection of what he enjoyed.

Music Against the Funeral Mood

The proprietor understands that the song could make the gathering more animated. He asks whether it is meant to get everyone dancing and notes that the women at the tables are already beginning to speak shrilly. Because the punch has been started too early, he fears that the occasion is becoming a carnival rather than remaining controlled. His proposed response is to begin with “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and maintain a solemn atmosphere until he gives a signal. The contrast places “I Can't Give You Anything but Love” on the side of movement, drinking, and social release, while the hymn represents restraint and ceremonial seriousness.

Contesting Red’s Memory

The second man rejects the proprietor’s solemn alternative because Red would not have liked it. That objection turns the disagreement into a dispute over fidelity to the dead. The proprietor treats the gathering as an accommodation and refuses to run it like a funeral parlor; the second man treats Red’s known taste as the standard by which the music should be chosen. Between them, the song occupies an unstable position: it is a memorial offering, but one that threatens to dissolve mourning into dancing and disorder.

Narrative Significance

The expression condenses the scene’s collision between remembrance and spectacle. A song associated with love and popular entertainment is used to assert American identity, preserve an individual preference, and potentially transform a drinking gathering into a dance. The competing plans for the music reveal how quickly commemoration becomes a negotiation over social control: Red’s memory can be honored either by solemnizing the occasion or by allowing the living to reproduce the kind of pleasure he favored. The scene leaves that choice unresolved, making the song a small but decisive emblem of the gathering’s unstable boundary between memorial and carnival.