Regina Spektor Meaning

Music exists to decorate time so as one listens to it, they can enjoy the way it fills them with a sense of purpose and helps pass the time. If one is lucky enough, the song may also come across as poetic in its wording or in how the songwriter crafts the perfect metaphors to present ideas. This is not very different from what written poetry accomplishes. In fact, many songs when stripped of their music to just their bare bones of lyrics will read as poetry. To illustrate that idea, I picked the somewhat grim song “Prisoners” by Regina Spektor to show that when a song is taken apart, it shows the pieces of being a poem. It accomplishes that feat by how it delivers its message through both emotions and poetic devices.

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Spektor’s songs often come through as nonsensical the first time listening but as one looks as the lyrics and takes them bit by bit, poetic devices can be easily found within. For instance, lines fourteen and fifteen from the song make a clever allusion to classic fairy tales by saying “If Hans Christian Andersen could've had his way with me /Then none of this shit would have ever gone down”(14-15). Andersen is most famously known for the fairy tales he crafted, many of which contained happy endings for the protagonists. Spektor implies with this line that life would have turned out great if for the speaker if someone had input their own will over them. This idea of other people trying to help them is also illustrated in the lines “That a thousand arms can't hold down”(6-7) which functions as a synecdoche. While it does not literally mean a thousand disembodied arms, the audience is to substitute it to mean a thousand people trying to either help or repress them. However, though both of those lyric bits help illustrate the idea of people trying to control the prisoners lives, there also exists the other half of the analysis which is that the prisoners want to escape their fates. The metaphor “[...] rise from the mud [...]”(12) directly refers to the idea that they figuratively want to rise from a lowly existence to one with freedom. It also makes the audience sympathize with the prisoners whom have no control of their lives anymore. As a result of both the strong emotions attached to its message and all the poetic devices utilized, “Prisoners” supports itself up as not only as a song but as a