Analysis of Pink Floyd's Song, Mother
Had Sigmund Freud lived 40 more years (to the overripe old age of 123), he would have been delighted to hear such a wonderful example of his life's psychoanlytic work embodied in the haunting lyrics of "Mother." Or had Oedipus lived a few millennium longer than his fictional death he would have found an adversary in the youthful Pink, a young boy whose desire for maternal acceptance and love is arguably equal to the greatest mother-centered protagonists in the history of literature. Contrary to the eye-gouging antics of Oedipus or even the grandiose melodrama later in Floyd's album, "Mother" is relatively low-key and emotionally subtle. The music itself is interestingly split, though with few if any
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So why would the band choose to illustrate such a serious stage of personal development with the nursery rhyme-like style of the song's chorus? Before we get to that, the song's emotional and psychological message must first be examined.
Similar to the music, the lyrics are as subtle as they are unsettling. Although the song takes a seemingly forthright form of question and answer, the psychological implications behind the lyrics are far from being simple and straightforward. Although the battling was over, the effects of World War II were still extent in the years following the atrocious fight. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bomb as well as the deaths of millions of Holocaust victims and soldiers were all too fresh in the global consciousness. Fears of nuclear warfare and continued fighting ran rampant through the post-war world, instilling a sense of uncertainty in the generations of and following the war. Such fears are blatantly reflected by the first line of the song in which Pink asks his mother if "they'll drop the bomb," referring to the apprehension of enemy retaliation. However, this line, as well as the majority of the lyrics, is open to a wide range of interpretation. Because of the psychological tendency to group people into two main categories (those like "us" and those apart from "us," or the Other) coupled with the recent divisions of global powers in the war, one automatically assumes that the "they" Pink refers to is the
Elisheva Baumgarten’s work stands as a model for students and scholars alike in its comprehensive review of little-known writings and other sources from medieval Ashkenazi Jews as well as in its meticulous analysis of the often ambiguous writings. In Mothers and Children, Baumgarten examines a plethora of primary sources to explore the inner dynamics of Jewish families; she then uses this information to draw objective conclusions about the relationship between the Jewish and Christian communities in the middle ages.
In the novel All Over but the Shoutin’ Rick Bragg shows the love and devotion of what every mother should have through his mother. The only woman that Bragg truly cares for and takes time out of his day is for his mother Margaret Marie. Bragg tries to do the best for his mother and tries his best to make her proud of him. Bragg learned early in life that his mother strived to give her children everything possible. For Mrs. Bragg her children are the reason she wakes up everyday and tries to make a better life for them.
My song utilizes the poetic devices of simile, rhyming, imagery, and repetition like that of “Mrs. Potato Head” by Melanie Martinez. Unlike the other poetic devices, only one simile can be seen, and that’s in lines 8-9. Rhyming, on the other hand, runs rampant throughout the entire piece, only leaving a few small gaps in between. While not as frequently placed, imagery can be seen in lines 2, 11, 14-15, 16-18, 20-21, and 27. Each one of these lines gives you an insight into the troublesome life of the song’s namesake, Our Guardian Angel, whose unfortunate circumstances are purposefully downplayed like that of Martinez’s character, Mrs. Potato Head. In other words, Our Guardian Angel and Mrs. Potato Head are struggling to endure the ignorance
This has much on common with the first poem “ Setting up the Drum “ in that both of these texts the writers use instruments to show that one’s life can change and one can become Enlighted and positive even from the darkest moments of their lives. Overall the reader gets s a sense of hope and strength that someone can overcome difficult times and move forward to a meaningful
My story has a meaningful story behind it. The story is deep for me and even for the artist and probably for many other people. Hearing songs like this can inspire you. It inspired me to be thankful for the people in my life. One day they can be here the next they could be gone. You never know what’s going on in their lives.
The most obvious thing that is important to the character is his adopted daughter, Anna. Throughout the narrative he shows that he cares for her happiness and her health. She is unable to speak clearly and tell her own story, so the character (father) tells it for her. The character is trying to show the reader how effective music can be as a therapy, and is using his own experience to prove the worth of musical therapy. He gives example after example of how music improved the life of his daughter, and how she looks forward to her day with music so eagerly. One line he says, “Ask her a direct question and you will get a stammered word or two at most. Play a song and she will begin to shout out the words, even if she has never heard them before. ”It is a testament to how much music can change her attitude and behaviours. It seems to fill her with confidence and strength where usually she is frail, a picture painted by the quote above.
All of the songs on this album relay different messages to listeners. Most songs contain a lot of pathos, call to action and more. Pathos is really prominent in certain songs such as Sorry, Formation, and Freedom. An excerpt from Sorry says: “Now you want to say you 're sorry/Now you want to call me crying/Now you gotta see me wildin '/Now I 'm the one that 's lying/And I don 't feel bad about it/It 's exactly what you get.” This displays the emotions after getting out of a relationship or during the struggles of it. Other lyrics from this song that display this
Ludacris does a remarkable job of portraying his message about the struggles that some adolescents are faced with. “Runaway Love”, by Ludacris, featuring Mary J. Blige (2007), represents the theme of struggle through hip-hop and rap music. It is about little girls who are “stuck up in the world on their own.” They have to take care of themselves because the people they are around do not care about them. They range from nine to eleven years in age, and their goal in life, at such a young age, is to run away from home. Ludacris is trying to get the listener to realize the struggles that even children have to face because adults are not the only ones who have problems, like most people believe. He is very successful in
The poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, these two poems express uniqueness and similarities. In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” a young child describes his time spent with his father. In the poem “My Father’s Song” a grown man remembers the previous memories of time spent with his father, when he was a child. These two poems coincide through tone, word choice, and figurative language to show the relationship between a father and son.
Compare the ways in which poets reflect on parental relationships – Daddy by Sylvia Plath and Mother Who Gave Me Life by Gwen Harwood
Rage Against the Machine’s single "Testify", the first song from their 1999 album 'The Battle of Los Angeles", is a commentary on the American public’s blindness or numbness to global issues such as war, politics, capitalism, wealth, and power through the filtering of information by the mass news media. As it relates to Sociology, “Testify” deals mainly with Marxist Conflict Theory, and also incorporates many of the topics we have learned about in class throughout the semester.
“Time is gone the song is over”, now what? In life humanity craves more time. Time is the one fixation we cannot get enough of. Since humanity is required to age, time seems to slip away. We don’t comprehend how time is synthesized. Society knows it goes on forever, regardless of what happens in life. Pink Floyd’s album, Dark Side Of The Moon, had immense success. It was recorded in the summer of 1972 on Capital records. The song Time was written by Roger Waters and recorded in the progressive era of rock and roll. The song is important because it demonstrates how people don’t realize that time slips away. The song displays this by means of engineering, instruments, lyrics, and arrangement. Therefore, taking us into how this song fits the historical context of the progressive era of rock and roll.
In times of war it is quite common for people to start questioning their values and their actions and be unsure of the path they are taking. This is common because to protect our values we often are told that we have to take actions that conflict with those values. One example would be how to protect our liberties we must sometimes restrain those liberties during treacherous times. However, the ultimate question is whether or not going against the very values we stand for is a hypocritical and wrongful action plan. Bruce Springsteen approaches this very issue in his song “Devils & Dust”, from the CD with the same title, and he subtly criticizes how the United States is betraying
Who better to know about the stresses of the adult life, then someone who has lived through those stresses themselves? The ethos in the song is established by the fact that the writers are adults. The writers have the experience of living through the stresses and insecurities of being an adult as well as the societal and necessary pressure to conform and get a job. This pressure is reiterated in the line “Wake up you need to make money!” that is repeated multiple times towards the end of the song. The writers are wishing for a simpler time when they weren’t under the pressures of being an adult.
The Song of Experience is diametrically opposed to the former. It observes world from adults’ perspective