An Analysis of songs from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”
Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” is one of the most interesting and imaginative albums in the rock genre. It is considered a masterpiece to many, but there is so much more hidden beneath it all. Even though the music is incredible, the lyrics tell us a sad story about loss and isolation.
The story begins with the protagonist, Pink Floyd, sitting quietly in a trashed hotel room. The scene transitions to a flashback of his father, a british soldier in WWII, sitting in a bunker writing a letter. A German bomber plane drops a bomb into the bunker, killing his father. It then cuts to an infant Pink, crying in a stroller next to his mother. Through the course of his childhood, Pink didn’t have a father
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He begins to ask if there is anybody out there. Pink then starts to realize the expansiveness of his wall and the consequences of his self-made isolation. Feeling that his wife and the world are now beyond his grasp, Pink lists off the inconsequential thing that are still within his reach - the possessions in his hotel room and his unknown dreams of his freedom. “I've got a little black book with my poems in. Got a bag with a toothbrush and a comb in... I got elastic bands keeping my shoes on. Got those swollen hand blues. I've got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from... I've got wild staring eyes. And I've got a strong urge to fly. But I've got nowhere to fly to. Ooooh, Babe. When I pick up the phone, there's still nobody home.” (Roger Waters)
As Pink drifts further from reality, he longs for ideas of home and reconnecting with his personal roots, remembering the hope that Vera Lynn - a WWII era singer - gave within a country torn apart by war and loss. The personal and social ruin caused by conflict, like the death of Pink’s father, is alluded to in the humble request to bring all soldiers home from war. “Bring the boys back home. Bring the boys back home. Don't leave the children on their own, no, no. Bring the boys back home.” (Roger
...it may help us arrive at an understanding of the war situation through the eyes of what were those of an innocent child. It is almost unique in the sense that this was perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to directly give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the child-killer. While the book does give a glimpse of the war situation, the story should be taken with a grain of salt.
One of the many factors that have contributed to the success of Australian poetry both locally and internationally is the insightful commentary or depiction of issues uniquely Australian or strongly applicable to Australia. Many Australian poets have been and are fascinated by the issues relevant to Australia. Many in fact nearly all of these poets have been influenced or have experienced the subject matter they are discussing. These poets range from Oodgeroo Noonuccal Aboriginal and women’s rights activist to Banjo Patterson describing life in the bush. Bruce Dawe is also one of these poets. His insightful representation of the dreary, depressing life of many stay at home mothers in “Up the Wall” is a brilliant example of a poem strongly relevant to Australia.
The novel All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the poem, “In Flanders Field,” by John McCrae and the film, Gallipoli, Demonstrates how war makes men feel unimportant and, forces soldiers to make hard decisions that no one should half to make. In war people were forced to fight for their lives. Men were forced to kill one another to get their opinion across to the opposing sides. When men went home to their families they were too scared to say what had happened to them in the war. Many people had a glorified thought about how war is, Soldiers didn't tell them what had truly happened to them.
One way the authors disagree towards war is the separation of families. Throughout the book, many families were torn apart, leaving the rest weeping for those who left them. “Go, Sam. Go. Get out of my sight. I can’t bear to look at you anymore in that vile costume.” (Collier and Collier 22). The quote depicts Sam’s father
The powerful poem ‘Weapons Training’ showcases a sergeant, through malicious words, guiding his troops. However it is through ‘Homecoming’, where Dawe exposes the brutal hopelessness brought forth by the futility of war. Therefore it can be seen that war has an emotional toll on both families and the soldiers. Both poems have a recurring message that all war does is bring loss, death and mourning, showcasing Dawes strong opinions about a futile
He arrives back at his town, unused to the total absence of shells. He wonders how the populations can live such civil lives when there are such horrors occurring at the front. Sitting in his room, he attempts to recapture his innocence of youth preceding the war. But he is now of a lost generation, he has been estranged from his previous life and war is now the only thing he can believe in. It has ruined him in an irreversible way and has displayed a side of life which causes a childhood to vanish alongside any ambitions subsequent to the war in a civil life. They entered the war as mere children, yet they rapidly become adults. The only ideas as an adult they know are those of war. They have not experienced adulthood before so they cannot imagine what it will be lie when they return. His incompatibility is shown immediately after he arrives at the station of his home town. ”On the platform I look round; I know no one among all the people hurrying to and fro. A red-cross sister offers me something to drink. I turn away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with her own importance: "Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!"—She calls me "Comrade," but I will have none of it.” He is now aware of what she is
The persona in the poem reacts to the power the wall has and realizes that he must face his past and everything related to it, especially Vietnam.
Away from the front lines, soldiers are perceived and act as individuals, however, when pulled to the front, they come together creating and inseparable bond of camaraderie. Remarque’s All Quite on the Western Front illustrates the true content of war. The soldiers of the front lines fought with a common purpose, putting aside other desires and denying personal needs, creating a flagrant bond of camaraderie. Through this camaraderie Paul Baumer finds life on the front lines bearable, as we see in the relationships the soldiers share. Through Paul’s protection of his comrades, the family like relationship between the soldiers and the development of a close bond during free time, Remarque shows that the most important aspect of war is undoubtedly camaraderie.
The true beauty that war can hold despite its cruel nature is revealed in the poetry written later in the war. Guilaume Apollinaire’s poem “Gala” compares the burst of “two star shells” to a pink rose (5). The rose metaphor carries throughout the poem.
This affects each soldier when the war is finished. When a soldier returns back to his home after the war, he is unable to escape his primitive feelings of survival.
War slowly begins to strip away the ideals these boy-men once cherished. Their respect for authority is torn away by their disillusionment with their schoolteacher, Kantorek who pushed them to join. This is followed by their brief encounter with Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp. The contemptible tactics that their superior officer Himmelstoss perpetrates in the name of discipline finally shatters their respect for authority. As the boys, fresh from boot camp, march toward the front for the first time, each one looks over his shoulder at the departing transport truck. They realize that they have now cast aside their lives as schoolboys and they feel the numbing reality of their uncertain futures.
...though people believe that, those on the home front have it just as a bad as the soldiers, because they have to deal with the responsibilities of their husbands, there is nothing that can compare to what these men have gone through. The war itself consumed them of their ideology of a happy life, and while some might have entered the war with the hope that they would soon return home, most men came to grips with the fact that they might never make it out alive. The biggest tragedy that follows the war is not the number of deaths and the damages done, it is the broken mindset derives from being at war. These men are all prime examples of the hardships of being out at war and the consequences, ideologies, and lifestyles that develop from it.
It is evident that the occurrence of war throughout history has made a lasting impression on soldiers and civilians alike. This has been expressed over the years through different works of literature. The cost of war to the individual is illustrated in “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, and “The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick because each story shows some element of mental, emotional, and physical toll.
Lawrence Hill Books, c2009 Bracken, Patrick and Celia Petty (editors). Rethinking the Trauma of War. New York, NY: Save the Children Fund, Free Association Books, Ltd, 1998.
She is comfortable with herself and full of vitality, and her physical attributes also support this as she is described as a “fat spotty creature in pink whose feet hardly touched the ground” (11). Meanwhile, Pinkie is bony and skinny and uncomfortable with everything in his world. Pinkie’s eyes are also “slatey” and “touched with the annihilating eternity from which he had come and to which he went." (20). He carries his religion around like it is a burden to him, because he understands that heaven is so far out of reach to him