Religion and Spirituality

Another aspect of his youth that influenced both his music and his image in later life, is his connections with his religion and spirituality. He was raised as a Christian, but his issues with drug addictions and his outlaw image shadowed and separated his connection to God. All of this reinforced the impossibility of categorising Cash. He did embrace his outlaw image, but contradicted it still, to be the self-confessed saint and sinner his name is mostly associated with. Yet, despite his downfalls, and his sins he remained to keep a complicated relationship with his faith and spirituality.

It was his faith and spirit that saved him during his suicide attempt during his early years, and allowed him to embody the paradox and contradiction he kept up through his life. His self-identificiation as a sinner plays dynamically with his religious evocations, and not only reinforces his contradictory, outlaw image but rather plays on it. His religious and spiritual upbringing made him the man that he is today, and arguably without religion wouldn't have had the opportunity to even create the persona of Johnny Cash, as he wouldn't have been influenced from such an early age.

An American Hero - Representing the Working Class

At no point during his successful career did Cash attempt to disguise the fact that he grew up in and lived the majority of his youth in an American working-class family, struggling to get by. He in fact thrives on the traditional masculinity of which has been produced from his poor upbringing, and chose to be influenced to achieve social justice. As he sees himself as a voice for the downtrodden and those alienated from society, he explored the angst of the men unable to break free from their existence in poverty, and their resentment for the rich and privileged.

While he became a rich and privileged person himself, he didn't ignore the plea of other fellow Americans, and still used his fame and power to be a voice/spokesperson for the ill-treated. Instead, he took advantage of his past in poverty and urged political leaders and government officials to stand up for justice and peace in the same manner that he had.

His representation of the working class is abundant in his song; "One Piece at a Time." A song which looks at an auto-worker stealing parts of a car one at a time so he can eventually build a Cadillac. Like his own saint/sinner binary, the song explores the traditional masculinity, and the frustrations which arise from their labour producing such product, but never being able to own them, they steal them in the process as part of a protest.