Identity Crises and Contemporary Anxieties Played Against the Southern Rhythms of Country Music: “Waiting for the End of the World” by Ron Rash
Identity Crises and Contemporary Anxieties Played Against the Southern Rhythms of Country Music: “Waiting for the End of the World” by Ron Rash

Summary/Abstract: The short story ‘Waiting for the End of the World’, included in Ron Rash's 2010 collection ‘Burning Bright’, is replete with references to literature and music, while unfolding the scene of human misery and despair. Told in the first person by a band singer performing to a motley crowd of drunks and drug addicts at a roadhouse aptly named The Last Change, the story is a comprehensive and profound insight into contemporary identity, culture and consumerism, the specificities of the South and globalisation. The aim of this essay is to analyse the literary and musical references in this specific novel from the point of view of Southern specificity, to see how cultural artefacts contribute to people's sense of identification and belonging. Discussions around concepts such as pop culture, ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture’, authenticity and commercialism aim to define how the modern individual attempts to find meaning in a world of commercialism and indifference. The setting of the story, a truck stop whose customers are drunks and drug addicts fleeing a terrible existence, as perceived by an equally desperate singer, reinforces the importance of music, which can offer, at least temporarily, a sense of control, escape, confort and human communion.

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