54 pages • 1 hour read
Brendan SlocumbThe Violin Conspiracy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Ray’s Violin
Ray’s heirloom Stradivarius violin is the driving force of the novel. Many of the central characters have a connection to it, real or imagined, and it comes to mean different things to different people. To Grandma Nora, it’s a connection with her grandfather and with the tragic realities he, and many like him, had to face. To Nicole, it represents an opportunity to elevate herself above her small, limited life. To Ray’s mother and her siblings, it represents commercial value. To the Marks siblings, it represents self-validation and the imposition of control over others. To Ray, above all, it represents connection to his family heritage. He treats the violin as a partner and friend rather than a tool. When he starts performing with the violin, he begins a tradition of holding it out to the audience and treating it as a fellow performer, allowing it—and his ancestors—a moment of glory and gratitude:
He extended his left arm, hand firmly grasping the violin’s neck, held out the instrument as if he were showcasing a fellow performer: giving it full credit, extending it like a sword in the spotlight. He kept it there a moment. Not just his triumph, but the triumph of his grandmother, and her grandfather before her, here in front of this white audience where few Black people ever played. They had done it together, and together they bowed (149).
Notably, he never does this with his replacement violin.
Like Ray himself, the violin begins its journey as something overlooked and disrespected within the world of music. The first few people to see it think that it’s a worthless, factory-made violin in poor state of repair. In a moment of tongue-in-cheek irony, the violin is largely disregarded at first because it is completely white; the buildup of violin rosin hides its true identity. Once its origin is revealed, Ray’s story becomes an overnight sensation. The risk to Ray in this situation is that it becomes easy for the public and others in the music industry to attribute his success to his instrument. Anyone wanting to explain away Ray’s unconventional talent can simply point to the violin as an extraordinary advantage. This is why it’s essential to the structure of the novel to have Ray face his competition without the security of the Stradivarius violin. He successfully ascends to the final round and lands second place entirely on his own merits. This teaches both the world and himself that his talent comes from within, and not from this inanimate object. Hence, the absence of the violin—made a specter like Ray’s ancestors and Janice in the Epilogue—is as significant as its presence.
The Violin Case
Ray’s ancestor’s violin case is initially treated as a curiosity with no material value. The novel reveals that, when Leon was enslaved, their lodgings were near an alligator-infested swamp. When some of the enslaved people caught one of the alligators, they turned its skin into the case and used leftover scraps of fine imported fabric for its lining. These details give Ray some insight into how his ancestors lived. However, he ultimately disregards the case as impractical for modern living and trades it for a contemporary option that affords his violin more protection. This is ironic since Ray’s violin is put in jeopardy throughout the novel. His grandmother, by contrast, isn’t a musician who has to deal with the realities of playing the violin, and so she assigns equal value to both the violin and its case. When Ray returns to her with the replacement, she immediately inquires about the old one and is momentarily disoriented when Ray tells her that he bought one that would take better care of the instrument.
When Ray and his family begin searching for Leon’s paperwork, the violin case is an obvious place to look; however, Ray overlooks it in the way so many others have overlooked him. Hints are conveyed to the reader when Jacob Fisher requests the violin case for further examination. Slocumb uses several instances of foreshadowing when keeping Ray and the case apart in the final part. For example, after Jacob’s call, he suggests that Ray wait until he returns home to send the case over. Ray ends up bringing the case over sooner but keeps it in its protective garbage bag that has been encasing it for months. There is the sense that, if Ray would only open the bag and examine the case before dropping it off, all of his problems would be solved in an instant.
When the case finally is opened and its contents revealed, it leads the reader into Nora’s childhood letter about the horrors of American slavery. In this way, the case acts as a foil to the violin itself; while the violin represents a positive connection to Ray’s history, the case represents the darker side of this past. However, the case is not a negative symbol in itself, but rather one of remembrance and moving forward into the future.
Classical Music
To give the novel another layer, the author includes repeated references to specific classical composers and musical works through the motif of classical music. In Ray’s performances, he often reflects on the different energies of each piece that he’s playing. For instance, in Ray’s second-round competition, he plays a violin sonata by Mozart, pieces by Spanish composer Pablo de Sarasate and American composer Fritz Kreisler, and a final piece by Tchaikovsky. Each piece, though not allotted a large amount of space in the text, is briefly and deeply explored through Ray’s experience. When Ray plays the piece by a young Mozart, he reflects that “there was a world of possibility in front of Mozart, in front of Ray, and they were eager to see it through, eager to get on with life, eager to rise to whatever challenge was in store”; Sarasate’s piece is then described as a “delight that began slowly and stately and soon progressed into something so fast that he thought poor Mariamna might have a coronary trying to follow him” (280). When Ray moves into the Tchaikovsky, he embodies it completely: “Ray may have looked like a Black American, but secretly—secretly!—he was Russian. Secretly he’s spent his life ladling borscht and nibbling pelmeni. Vodka, not blood, surged through his veins” (281). Each of the pieces reflect elements of Ray’s character development: coming of age through music, rising quickly to fame, and traveling the world.
Slocumb uses many other moments throughout the text to highlight other composers and works—some mainstream and some less well-known. Each experience that Ray has with his violin is punctuated by immersing himself in particular musical pieces. Toward the end of the novel, the text references several musicians and composers of color including William Grant Still, Florence Price, and Wynton Marsalis. Raising awareness of their works is hence both diegetic and a real function of The Violin Conspiracy.
