Beach Music

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide, and genocide.

Beach Music highlights the lasting mental and emotional effects of trauma. Specifically, the novel unpacks the way trauma can extend from one generation to the next.

The most profound example of generational trauma in the novel is that which Shyla inherits from her parents. Ruth and George Fox experienced profound suffering during World War II when they were subjected to the cruelty and violence of the Nazi regime. Ruth and George respond to their nightmarish experiences in different ways. Ruth shares her story and her ongoing anxiety with her daughter. Jack overhears Ruth’s endless warnings to Shyla, evidence of her internalized terror of danger and death: “Close that door when you talk to me […] or we’ll all be dead of pneumonia […] Go and wash your hands. Don’t play in the dirt anymore. God didn’t make you an ant […] Turn off that stove. Are you crazy or what?” (474). Jack recalls Shyla’s “small, fearful face” (474) in that moment and reflects on the deep fear and anxiety that Ruth instilled in her daughter. This is a darkness that Shyla is never able to shake. George, on the other hand, does not tell his story to anyone until he reveals it to Jack in Chapter 34. Instead, George turns inward, feeling irredeemable because of the guilt he feels over what he was forced to do. As a father, George is thus removed and harsh. Instead of speaking, he obsessively plays the piano and passes that obsession on to Shyla.

As Jack notes, “Neither of Shyla’s parents could leave the country of their hideous past” (475). Shyla’s eventual death by suicide reinforces that her parents’ trauma has passed on to her. Shyla’s final words refer to her mother’s story about the Lady of the Coins, and just before dying she gets a new tattoo—a duplicate of the number forcibly tattooed onto George (and all the other concentration camp victims) in Auschwitz. Jack reflects on that tattoo, thinking “The presence of that raw angry number was an eloquent annotation binding her to the great blood-letting of her people” (475). It isn’t only Shyla’s death that underscores her inherited trauma. Her friends suspect that she was inspired to join the antiwar movement by her parents’ memories of the Holocaust. As Radical Bob puts it, "To her, the Vietnamese were Jews. The Americans were the invading army, so they became Nazis in her mind. Every time I argued with Shyla about the war, she took me on a field trip to Auschwitz” (658). In detailing the experiences of the Foxes during the war, and then following the way their parenting styles reflect their scars, Conroy explores the lasting, intergenerational ripples of trauma.

Of course, the generational trauma of the Fox family extends past Shyla to her daughter Leah. Leah, still a young girl during the events of the novel, is confronted by the concepts of depression, suicide, and loss at an early age because of her mother’s trauma. She has also been kept from half of her heritage, as Jack, in a misguided and damaging attempt to protect her from her grandparents’ custody suit, does not teach her about her Jewish roots. The novel ends on an optimistic note that Leah will be well-cared for and will hopefully have the support she needs to process her loss and reclaim all aspects of her identity, but her mother’s suicide will certainly impact her for the rest of her life. Conroy contends that trauma has a long reach, and that it can impact the mental and emotional well-being of generations.