Nearer, My God, to Thee

Nearer, My God, to Thee becomes the musical emblem of an attempted funeral solemnity after Red’s death. Its performance briefly quiets the room, but the scene exposes how quickly ritual mourning can be displaced by alcohol, spectacle, and the crowd’s competing demands.

Intended Function

The proprietor orders the orchestra to begin with Nearer, My God, to Thee because the punch has started too early and the gathering is turning into what he calls a carnival. His instruction is practical as well as ceremonial: the music should sober the women and establish a grave mood until he gives the musicians a signal. The hymn is therefore deployed as a device of social control, meant to transform an unruly celebration into an acceptable memorial.

The proprietor’s choice also reveals the unstable status of the gathering. He has arranged it as an accommodation rather than as a genuine funeral observance, insisting that he is not running a funeral parlor. The hymn must supply the solemnity that the occasion itself lacks. It is expected to create, through sound, a temporary boundary between grief and revelry.

Performance and Immediate Effect

The orchestra plays Nearer, My God, to Thee, and the audience grows quiet. For a moment the music succeeds: the room’s talk subsides, and the hymn gives collective form to the death being marked. Its religious associations make the performance more than background entertainment; they provide a public language for mourning in a room otherwise governed by drinking and informal noise.

That solemn effect is immediately tested by the entrance of a woman in a red dress. She comes in unsteadily and calls out, “Whoopee,” before bidding farewell to Red and predicting that he will be in hell before she can reach Little Rock. Her drunken irreverence punctures the hymn’s decorum, while the voices demanding silence show the crowd trying to preserve the fragile ritual. The music has not eliminated disorder; it has only made the conflict between mourning and carnival audible.

Contrast with Carnival

The second man objects that Red would not have liked a solemn treatment, recalling his preference for the livelier “I Cant Give You Anything but Love.” The contrast places Nearer, My God, to Thee between two incompatible representations of Red: one shaped by religious mourning and the other by personal taste, entertainment, and remembered sociability. The hymn is chosen by those managing the event, while the popular song represents the dead man’s supposed wishes.

The proprietor’s resistance to the livelier mood is not a rejection of celebration in general but an attempt to delay it. He wants solemnity maintained until the proper moment, after which the gathering may resume drinking. The resulting sequence makes the hymn a temporary brake rather than a final resolution. It interrupts the carnival without replacing it.

Displacement and Significance

Gene soon calls the crowd to come and drink, offering the liquor freely and urging that no one have a dry throat or eye within ten minutes. Those at the rear begin moving toward the door, and the proprietor urgently signals the orchestra. The cornetist responds with a solo of In That Haven of Rest, but the crowd continues to dwindle through the doorway where Gene is waving people onward. Two middle-aged women remain quietly weeping beneath flowered hats.

The hymn’s significance lies in this failure as much as in its initial success. It can make the audience still, but it cannot hold the gathering together against the pressure of intoxication, movement, and spectacle. The scene converts a familiar sacred song into an instrument of contested mourning: for a few moments it creates communal silence, then gives way to another religious song while the room empties. Nearer, My God, to Thee thus marks the distance between the language of solemn remembrance and the social reality surrounding Red’s death.