ABSTRACT
In Beggar’s Banquet, we hear the cries of individuals struggling to steady themselves after rejecting an objective view of morality in favor of moral anti-realism. The atrocities recounted in “Sympathy for the Devil,” reveal a world of such cruelty that it becomes impossible to believe we live in an ordered, law-governed universe. The rejection of objective morality signals a freedom from its restrictions, giving license to the rock and roll lifestyle characteristic of much of the Stone’s music, as we see in “Stray Cat Blues.” Yet, we also hear a deep desolation reminiscent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s proclamation that we are all condemned to be free. We are “puzzled” by the Devil because we can’t figure out “the nature of his game.” We don’t understand the evil, or why it occurs. We feel like frauds continuing to follow conventional morality that lacks an objective grounding, yet we struggle to find our place in a world where we are forced to write our own rules. This internal conflict manifests itself in music that is at once strongly defiant of meaningless social norms while clinging strangely to some vestige of those old norms. Whether it’s through the personification of evil in the form of the old Judeo-Christian Devil, or in “Dear Doctor’s” hapless protagonist who feels unable to back out of a marriage he doesn’t want, Beggar’s Banquet puts its finger on our struggle to find a place in a chaotic universe.
