62 pages • 2 hours read
Bel Canto
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Beautiful Singing: The Power of Female Music
Content Warning: The novel recounts a hostage situation with its accompanying psychological stress. It also contains scenes of graphic violence. The term “terrorist” is used throughout to describe the group that takes the hostages, following the author’s lead. The novel invokes stereotypes about Indigenous peoples, and their role as terrorists here is one of these stereotypes. The novel also refers to sexual harassment.
Roxanne Coss commands the household of hostages and terrorists alike with the mesmerizing quality of her voice. As described throughout the book, her singing is unparalleled, infused with beauty and longing and alternately portraying the triumph of the human spirit or the tragedy of great loss. These two diametrically opposed experiences animate the novel as a whole. She sings classical opera music, as a soprano of the highest order, and even those who have never heard such music before—the Indigenous terrorists, for example—are immediately captivated. If it is the music that has brought all of the people to the Vice President’s mansion in the first place, then it is the music that keeps them all in the mansion for months. In the process, the music breaks down the barriers between groups and creates a community wherein love, mutual understanding, and friendship can flourish. Most opera, at least for the attendees, is sung in a different language than the one they natively speak; even though they cannot directly communicate with each other, the people bond and appreciate the shared beauty of their relationships.
At first, it is only the attendees of Mr. Hosokawa’s birthday party—the group who would become hostages—who experience the magnificence of Roxanne’s abilities. It fills them with desire and longing: “They were so taken by the beauty of her voice that they wanted to cover her mouth with their mouth, drink it in” (1). This is at the heart of Roxanne’s capacity to take control, to make demands with which nobody else could hope to get away; she is akin to the Pied Piper, leading the group into her world, which is filled with beautiful music and fantastic stories.
It is noteworthy that her presence, and the fact that most of the men fall helplessly in love with her, does not sow dissension but rather fosters harmony, like the music she sings. When the music returns to the household after an initial hiatus, and Kato plays Chopin at the piano, “terrorist and hostage alike [turn] and [listen] and [feel] a great easing in their chests” (127). Music soothes the savage beast, as the adage goes. The people bond over a shared cultural beauty that transcends national divisions.
The music also elicits strong emotions, heightening states of being. When Roxanne bursts into song in an attempt to sway the terrorists into allowing her the sheet music that Messner has brought, none of the terrorists are a match for her power: “Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried for the beauty of the music, certainly, but also for the failure of their plans” (152). Even General Benjamin, the most ideologically confident of them all, is confounded: “The music had confused him to the point of senselessness. He could not hold on to his convictions” (153). This is the first sign of the thawing between the terrorists and their hostages, an indication of how the mansion will become a household. Just as beauty is truth, so too does beautiful music reveal the truth: the terrorists’ plans have been thwarted, and the stand-off merely delays the inevitable. In the interim, however, the music will sustain them, and the delineation between who is prisoner and who is jailer begins to dissolve. It is notable that Roxanne is the only woman present, too, at least until the female terrorists are revealed; the groups unite around her as she offers a peaceful aesthetic way to reconcile their differences, which is distinct from the men’s violent methods.
The book’s title, Bel Canto, means “beautiful singing” in Italian. It also refers to a specific tradition within opera, wherein the emotional tenor of the voice and phrasing match the sentiment of the written material. This is exactly how Roxanne Coss plays her role in the drama between the hostages and the terrorists: the emotional tenor of her singing, of the music she chooses, rises to the occasion of what the temporary inhabitants of the Vice Presidential mansion experience. The music itself begins to feel as inevitable as the tragic ending: “Among themselves they spoke as if the singing had been part of their plan. It calmed the hostages. It focused the soldiers” (165).
As the groups become closer, the urgency of Roxanne’s singing grows as well: “She sang as if she were saving the life of every person in the room” (201). Alas, even the power of music can be silenced with a bullet. Still, she and Gen attempt to salvage the experience and honor the dead through their union and her operatic career. As Gen says to Simon Thibault, “This is a world in which someone could have written such music, a world in which she can still sing that music with so much compassion. That’s proof of something, isn’t it?” (318). The music is proof that love will play on. It, too, indicates that the only union to continue after this tragedy is one that circles around female aesthetic power and not national borders and patriarchal constructs. Roxanne’s music forms the bond here after the plot; her and Gen’s relationship forms a song from the tragedy they share, echoing opera and its tendency use beautiful music to portray tragic events.
Resonant Sounds: Political Voice and Agency of the Oppressed
While voice is primarily associated with Roxanne Coss and her “beautiful singing,” it is used in various other ways throughout the book and is a motif that reveals connections between characters and agency among the oppressed. Even silence, the opposite of voice, takes on significance; not using one’s voice can be its own form of communication or resistance. Voice conveys not only what one needs and wants but also what one feels; it is alternately an instrument of beauty (Roxanne’s singing) and of bullying (the sirens and shouting of the police). It can comfort or disturb; it can bark orders or whisper love. Above all, voice is how one connects with others, whether for good or for ill, and it signifies the control one has over one’s own circumstances. Voice signals agency, and here it can be a positive political agency, such as with the Indigenous group advocating for increased rights, or a negative political agency, such as with the government troops’ bullhorns. Voice can also be creative in the form of a woman’s voice that unites the groups, or it can be destructive, as is the case with patriarchal violence and voice used to achieve nationalistic or violent political ends.
For an example of how voice fosters connection, one need look no further than the bond between Mr. Hosokawa and Gen. When Mr. Hosokawa first hires Gen, he thinks that Gen’s voice sounds familiar, though it takes him a while to understand why: “Mr. Hosokawa finally recognized the voice. Something so familiar, that’s what he had thought. It was his own voice” (17). When Gen translates for Mr. Hosokawa, he becomes him, in a sense; they are connected through the sound of that voice. Gen and Mr. Hosokawa are, indeed, inextricably and irrevocably linked, as the ending of the book makes clear: Mr. Hosokawa has died, in an ill-fated attempt to save Carmen, so Gen takes his place—an act, here, of respect not usurpation—and marries Roxanne. For another example, Mr. Hosokawa also forms a deep connection with Roxanne via her voice. Before he even meets her, he feels the pull of that magical sound: “the beautiful voice of Roxanne Coss is singing her Gilda to the young Katsumi Hosokawa. [. . .] Her voice stays inside him, becomes him" (50). They are intertwined before they even meet. Voice connects cultural groups and individuals.
The timbre of voices also expresses a variety of emotional states and reveals a range of needs and demands. For example, after the police arrive at the scene of the hostage-taking, they make their presence known: “Voices, exaggerated and mangled through the bullhorn’s magnifications, shouted instructions toward the street, made demands towards the house” (29). These offstage voices—the police never enter the stage of the novel—punctuate the (hopeless) circumstances of the hapless terrorists; the sound of the sirens is menacing, quite the opposite of Roxanne’s singing. The voices of the hostages themselves begin to rise once the terrorists allow them some room to move:
What had been a few pockets of careful whispering at first was now a steady hum as people returned from the bathrooms. [. . .] Quietly, people began to have tentative conversations, a murmur then a dialogue rose up from the floor, until the room became a cocktail party (37).
Voices embolden the hostages, most of all Roxanne, to make their needs known. Voice enables agency.
It is ironic how the hostages must exercise their vocal agency towards the terrorists, while in the outside world the situations would be reversed: the Indigenous group must clamor for rights amid a world of rich executives and politicians. The hostages must exercise their own political voice and agency in this situation; the novel suggests the world would be better if led by people like the Indigenous group, as they allow for the voices of the hostages and the formation of a quasi-utopia. In the outside world, however, the rich executives and politicians do not allow for Indigenous voices and create an unequal society that has prompted the actions of these Indigenous people. The novel envisions a society in which all voices are listened to.
Voice can also inspire hope, especially when that voice is Roxanne’s. When Father Arguedas calls his friend, the music teacher, Roxanne speaks the names of operas into the phone. She is not even breaking into song and is just using her speaking voice to request what she wants—which is powerful in and of itself. It affects Father Arguedas deeply, much as her singing does:
He was paralyzed by her voice, the music of speaking, the rhythmic loops of the names that passed through her lips, into the phone, and then into Manuel’s ear some two miles away. The priest knew then for sure that he would survive this (144).
Merely the sound of Roxanne’s voice reeling off the names of famous operas provides Father Arguedas with absolute belief in their survival.
Voices are often a comfort, too, as when Esmeralda the nanny stitches up the Vice President’s face: “She was silent in her concentrations and still the very thought of her voice made him relax, and though it hurt he knew he would be sorry when it was over” (48). Gen employs his voice in this way, as well, when he translates an order to stand to the hostages: “He said it in languages he knew he need not include, Serbo-Croatian and Cantonese, just because there was comfort in speaking and no one tried to stop him” (62). Again, voice implies agency, taking control of one’s own actions and providing comfort to oneself and others. Gen speaks in all languages, even those not needed in this situation, to emphasize that the goal here is a shared utopia, a musical chorus of all voices together.
There is also a kind of comfort in not using one’s voice, as demonstrated by both of the novel’s love matches. Mr. Hosokawa and Roxanne fall in love, regardless of the fact that they cannot communicate with each other through conventional conversation. It is enough that “Mr. Hosokawa looked at Roxanne and with a certain tenderness of expression seemed to cover all his points in silence” (211). They are connected despite the lack of a common tongue. Gen and Carmen’s relationship employs this same kind of unspoken connection: “Always there was Carmen, her bright dark eyes turned up to him, ready to help him like a person whose life you’ve saved. He didn’t even have to say it. That was how they understood each other” (269). Carmen’s stealthy ways reveal as much about her character—and her character’s knack for survival—as her voice does. Her loss weighs heavily on the survivors. Her voice is demonstrated here by her looks and expressions; she possesses a non-verbal voice, another voice unappreciated in society but important to many people across the world all the same. Carmen also wants to learn to read and write; as a political member of the world, she wants to be able to express her voice and have it be heard.
From the Vice President speaking up when the terrorists demand to see the President to Roxanne’s requests and Carmen’s desire to become literate, the power of voice resonates throughout the book. Like music, voice often functions to bring people together when it is not used as a tool for divisiveness—that is, when it indicates agency and connection. Language itself is not the only marker of voice, as Roxanne notes. Ultimately, she “was far beyond thinking that speaking the same language was the only way to communicate with people” (307). Her own operatic singing, often learned phonetically, has already taught her as much. Her experience in the mansion only furthers such understanding. Voice comes in many forms but can and should always be used as a way to unite groups and people.
Like Global Family: Cultural Attachments and Affiliations
The term “Stockholm syndrome” refers to the ways in which some hostages will begin to identify and sympathize with their captors or abusers. Bel Canto certainly brushes up against the assumption that the hostages here are potentially suffering from such a disorder. However, the author slowly debunks this notion, weaving a tale wherein mutual understanding, empathy, love, and compassion become the defining features of hostages and terrorists alike.
They form attachments that are both of necessity and of choice. That is, on the one hand, these bonds are borne of the stressful situation in which they find themselves; on the other hand, they reveal genuine expressions of friendship, fealty, and love. The implication in the creation of these unlikely affiliations is that hatred only thrives in ignorance; once the “Other” is known, the “Self” cannot help but respond with sympathy. The humanizing impulse is stronger than the impulse to despise—a utopian sentiment for a novel that crafts, at least for a time, its own version of utopia. It envisions a kind of global or cross-cultural family; family here is not defined by shared blood, race, or nationality but by a universal desire to belong and help others. The people form cultural attachments across class, race, and ethnic lines even though they do not speak the same language; the novel envisions a global utopia.
The first indication of how traumatic circumstances can forge meaningful bonds comes almost immediately after the terrorists take the hostages, an indication of how rapidly these connections are made. Ruben Iglesias, the Vice President, has been wounded—hit in the side of his face with the butt of a rifle—but miraculously not murdered as everyone on the hostage side sees it. His relief and gratitude gush out in fellow feeling for his guests:
How quickly one could form attachments under circumstances like these, what bold conclusions a man could come to: Roxanne Coss was the woman he had always loved; Gen Watanabe was his son [. . .] Ruben Iglesias wondered if all hostages, all over the world, felt more or less the same way (60).
When Roxanne’s original accompanist dies a short time later, the entire group feels a great loss—even though they do not even know his name or where he comes from. In fact, his loss eclipses the freeing of the wives and children:
It was the accompanist they felt the loss of, even all the men who had so recently sent their wives and lovers outside, watched them walk away in the full splendor of their evening dress, they were thinking of the dead man (86).
Their feelings are explicable only through the nature of their predicament; nobody else can possibly understand what they are experiencing, emotionally speaking—except each other. Here trauma unites people across racial, class, and nationalistic lines; the novel suggests the struggle between groups can actually be a potential source of their unification.
As the days stretch into weeks and then months, general attachments turn into specific affiliations. Gen will notice his resemblance to Mr. Hosokawa: “Two Japanese men, both wearing glasses, one was taller and twenty-five years younger, but in this room where people had so little in common Gen could see for the first time how they looked very much the same” (114). They only resemble each other in this particular context, that is. The Vice President will form a bond with the contractor, Oscar, because “they both lived in the same city [which] made them feel like neighbors then old friends and then brothers” (120). Later, Ruben will grow so attached to the young terrorist, Ishmael, that he pledges to adopt the boy after the crisis is over. Of course, Mr. Hosokawa and Roxanne form a personal affiliation which begins with opera and ends in love, and Gen himself will fall in love with Carmen.
Roxanne will also establish a meaningful friendship with the vulnerable young terrorist; she will invite Carmen to sleep in the bed with her on occasion: “In this way, only for the little time they had together in the mornings, they were sisters, girlfriends, the same” (162). An international opera star and a barely literate teenaged terrorist become sisters in the pressure cooker of the hostage situation. Or, conversely, they become interconnected in the utopian community that has been created out of understanding and mutual respect. The group connections eventually become specific interpersonal connections; friends become romantic partners and acquaintances become sisters and brothers. The novel envisions an actual global family forming across these disparate groups.
Small kindnesses and gestures begin to characterize all of the interactions between the members of this unlikely group. The Vice President offers antibiotics to General Benjamin so the terrorist can treat his shingles infection. The terrorists finally allow the hostages to go outside, where impromptu games of soccer crop up, a running club is formed, and the garden gets some much-needed attention—with both hostages and terrorists participating in all activities. As Gen argues, in the calm before the final storming of the mansion, “’If they keep us here forever, we’ll manage’” (302). He is painfully aware that he and his lover, Carmen, come from different points on the spectrum, unlike Mr. Hosokawa and Roxanne. Gen willfully forgets Carmen’s role as a terrorist. All of the people treat each other kindly and collaborate in sports and on chores. They form a society unified by their disparate elements, a society that functions together and improves their world, that of the mansion, by helping one another and forgetting differences. Of course, most of the bonds formed in such an extraordinary scenario will be instantly severed by the government soldiers whose orders are to execute those on the wrong side of the law. The author wonders what the world would be like without these violent and patriarchal divisive actions.
Unlock all 62 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Ann Patchett
