Rob’s career is an issue often revisited within the novel, and is the cause of some unhappiness for him. He uses sarcastic humour to convey his discontent in his job. The main feeling conveyed by Rob about his job is that he is trapped- “I’m sick of the sight of the place, to be honest. Some days I’m sure I’ll go berserk, rip the Elvis Costello mobile down from the ceiling, throw the ‘Country Artists (Male) A-K’ rack out into the street, go off to work in a Virgin Megastore and never come back.” Although he wishes he could, Rob makes no attempt to escape from his job, one which is hard and pays badly but involves the main passion of his life: music. This shows an un-ambitious side to Rob’s character. Rob finds it challenging to face up to a problem and attempt to resolve it. As fixing his personal problems becomes more stressful for him, we see Rob turn to music as a stress relief. “Tuesday night I reorganize my record collection; I often do this at periods of emotional stress.” Rob becomes increasingly strained over his personal life. He appears to be a generally stressed person, and partly because he has few friends to confide in. Rob is a private and almost secretive person, and this is illustrated in the way he explains that a one-to-one conversation with a friend would be very unusual. “For a moment, I’m almost tempted: a heart-to-heart with Dick would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” However, he declines this conversation, proving the point that even in times of crisis he is unwilling to share his feelings. Although Rob's character has been conveyed so far as quite unemotional, he finds himself crying during a song at a concert and becomes very emotional. “I find myself in two apparently contradictory states: a) I suddenly miss Laura with a passion that has been entirely absent for the last four days, and b) I fall in love with Marie LaSalle.” (The singer). This suggests he has been withholding the emotions he has been feeling since his girlfriend’s departure. It takes the presence of someone new and attractive to make Rob realize how he misses Laura. Again, we are made aware of how Rob uses music to convey his feelings; as he is thinking of when he first met Laura and he made her a cassette. “I spent hours putting that cassette together. To me, making a tape is like writing a letter- there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one.” Through fantasizing about being with someone else, and reminiscing about the first acquaintance he had with Laura, Rob realizes now that he misses her, and he also misses how he felt in the initial stages of his relationship with her.
Living without Laura stimulates Rob to think about what it was that caused them to separate, and what Laura will be going through with another partner. He becomes obsessed with contemplating Laura’s new partner, and whether life with him and in particular, sex with him is superior to what she had with Rob. Rob becomes easily disheartened, and appears to be very paranoid about Laura’s new partner. “Have you missed me at all even one bit, do you love me, do you love him, do you want to end up with him, do you want to have babies with him, and is it better, is it better, IS IT BETTER?” The image of the stereotypical male is portrayed well here. Rob fits this image well; he sees himself as competition for Laura’s new partner, and wishes to use sexuality to make a judgement on this. After having an upsetting conversation with Laura Rob ends up sleeping with Marie La Salle, a singer he has seen. Whilst contemplating this, Rob is disappointed. He realizes he and Marie are both insecure about what they want from a relationship, and if they could find it with each other. “Before we slept together, there was at least some pretence that it was something we both wanted to do.” He feels apprehensive that Marie will also think it was a mistake and emerges as being very under-confident. “Now all the pretence seems to have gone, and we’re left to face the fact that we’re sitting here because we don’t know anybody else we could be sitting with.” Throughout the novel, Rob becomes increasingly acrimonious about his separation with Laura. It reaches an obsessive peak when he decides to take action against Laura’s happiness. “You can see that she thinks she’s started out on some new stage in her life. She hasn’t. I’m not going to let her”. The infatuation Rob developed for Laura only appeared after they were no longer together, and implies he feels unable to live without her, and unhappy to live with her.
What other people think of Rob worries him a lot, and this becomes obvious as he goes to a dinner party at an old friends house. “They have smart jobs and I have a scruffy job, they are rich and I am poor, they are self confident and I am incontinent, they do not smoke and I do, they have opinions and I have lists.” This kind of comparison is drawn so that we feel a sympathy towards Rob, and his self conscious nature. The impression I get from quotes like this is that Rob has a simple desire-to be happy. He does not know if having any of these things would make him happier, just that he is not fully content with his life as it is. The jealousy he feels of devoted couples with happy lives is shown when he says while at a couple’s house, “I fall in love with both of them-with what they have, and the way they treat each other, and the way they make me feel as if I am the new center of their world.”
In the latter stages of the novel a change in Rob’s character emerges as he and Laura are reunited as a couple. For Rob, this is more than being happy with a partner. It means he is more content in his job, feels uncompetitive, and has approval from his parents who hope he will settle down. The approval of his parents is something Rob is particularly happy with, and notices their positive feelings towards him while at their house, “There’s a glow in the kitchen now, genuine three way affection, where previously there might have been simply mutual antagonism ending with my mum’s tears and me slamming the door.”
“High Fideltiy” is an entertaining and amusing novel which portrayed the theme of love using humour, but managed to remain serious and at some points saddening. It used a clear moral, which was that the power of love should be believed in, as it can overcome other difficulties and ordeals that life involves. Rob’s progression in character is perfect proof of this, as it drastically improves when he is reunited with his girlfriend. Rob begins as a saddened, bitter and selfish man, and being in love makes him more carefree and joyful. I thoroughly enjoyed reading “High Fidelity” and it’s wit, realistic style and intriguing characters make it easy and likeable to read.
