Sunday, April 19, 2009

Conclusion: Dark Tower Lyrical Analysis

If you are someone like me, you can find connections to such a vast epic as Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" anywhere. I've spent a couple of hours tonight finding some songs that might not be super-obvious, but that stood out to me as connecting beyond coincidence to King's masterpiece. Hope you enjoy, hope you leave comments (especially you, my good friend Roland), and hope it's made you think a little. In typical me fashion, this is the third installment. The other two are the posts directly before this. Hope this doesn't make things too confusing : )

"1979" by Smashing Pumpkins
Ah yes, except for Roland, human race is in this interesting cycle that it's impossible to get out of.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"And we don't know/
Just where our bones will rest to dust I guess/
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below"

"Yellow Ledbetter" by Pearl Jam
So is Roland of Gilead a hero? A villain? A flawed man? Salvation for all humanity?
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"I don't know whether I'm the boxer or the bag."

"Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones
Oh, poor, poor Susan Delgado. (Although, to be fair, the gunslinger really did believe he loved her ... this song just makes me think of the poor doomed girl).
NOTABLE LYRICS
"Under my thumb/
Her eyes are just kept to herself/
Under my thumb, well I/
I can still look at someone else."

"Superman" by Five for Fighting
Poor, poor, poor Roland. He realizes this eventually, much to his own misfortune.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"I'm only a man in a silly red sheet/
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street/
Only a man in a funny red sheet/
Looking for special things inside of me."

"Love Her Madly" by The Doors
Yes, Roland the Gunslinger did love madly (and deeply and truly and all that). Didn't do him much good though, poor guy...
NOTABLE LYRICS
"All your love is gone/
So sing a lonely song/
Of a deep blue dream/
Seven horses seem to be on the mark."

"Break on Through" by The Doors
More betrayal, of course. And the concept of breaking ....
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"I found an island in your arms/
A country in your eyes/
Arms that chained us, eyes that lied/
Break on through to the other side."

"Losing my Religion" by REM
Poor Roland ... he doesn't understand the true portent of his slips ... and that they will adversely impact him personally more than his quest, if that makes any sense.
NOTABLE LYRICS
"Consider this/
The hint of the century/
Consider this/
The slip that brought me/
To my knees failed/
What if all these fantasies/
Come flailing around/
Now I've said too much."

"I Would Do Anything for Love" by Meat Loaf
Roland speaks of (and knows of) magic, sand is a constant in DT1 as the gunslinger struggles across the desert, and the allusions to the Emerald City in Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" are impossible to ignore.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"Will you make me some magic, with your own two hands?/
Can you build an emerald city with these grains of sand?/
Can you give me something I can take home?"

3 comments:

  1. Great post! Neil Gaiman is cited in lots of lyrics too; it would be interesting to find out if any writer holds the spot as most-often mentioned by musicians.

    ReplyDelete
  2. King is definitely one of my favorite authors, and The Dark Tower is a great series (I haven't finished it yet btw). All of the lyrical info you point out doesn't surprise me though, since I kind of see King as the rockstar of authors. His book On Writing is a must read as well. If you haven't picked it up, you really need to. Great stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, this has been great fun for me : ) And Eric, "On Writing" is one of the greatest non-fiction books I've ever read!

    ReplyDelete

Are Minorities Discouraged from Taking Upper-Level Classes?: The Elephant in the Room

As a public school teacher for sixteen years, I sometimes feel like I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen Standards come and go (and despite the brou...