Song Analysis for "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the song so that the audience is capable of understanding its meaning better.

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Thesis Statement: The album, The Wall by Pink Floyd features one of those in-depth albums that is creatively written in the history of rock music. The song makes use of stylistic features to convey the central theme of isolation and abandonment and to adjust into the rhythm of the music and the fell of connection to the song.

HISTORY OF THE ARTIST AND THE SONG

Pink Floyd was a band that originated from Britain established in the mid-'60s constituting college students in London. The band originally comprised of Richard Wright, Syd Barret, Roger Walters, and Nick Mason. The band is renowned for being one of the pioneers of progressive rock music, and the use of philosophy and concept in their lyrics. Each of the albums released by this band focused on a specific theme. (Ghorbanpour 4). The band's eleventh album, known as the wall and their most famous all over the world, was produced in 1979. This album's lyrics and the music were masterminded by Waters assisted by Wright, Mason, and Gilmour.

The song Another Brick in the Wall describes a boy named Pink who lost his father during World War II. Pink continues to meet life barriers after his father's demise. He undergoes mistreatment in school from the teachers, psychological barriers from his overprotective mother, his marriage breakdown. All of the challenges result to the self-imposed isolation from his society, that is metaphorically demonstrated by a wall that separates him from the world around him (Ghorbanpour 4).

MEANING OF THE SONG

Pink, the main character is facing abandonment and societal isolation. Again, he is overwhelmed by the troubles he was facing in his life and hence starts to create a mental wall that isolates him further from the world around him. Each barrier he comes across in his life adds an extra brick on the wall of isolation that was ever-growing (Ghorbanpour 15).

THE USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Rhyme. Patterns of rhyme, the lyrics of the song do not show exact rhyme in detail, not at least at the endpoints of the lines. However, the type of rhyming patterns that are featured in this song is internal and approximate rhyme (Ghorbanpour 9). An example of these types of rhyme is as shown in the lines below.

But in the town, it was well known (2g)

When they got home at night (2h)

Their fat and psychopathic wives (2i)

Would thrash them within inches of their lives (2j) (Biesen 3277).

These two pairs of words (town, known) demonstrate internal rhyme while (got, night) shows partial rhyme. Exact rhyme has been shown by the words (wives, lives) at the end of the last two lines of the excerpt of the song above (Ghorbanpour 9). Also, in the lines below, 'All in all...' features internal rhyme, according to the hook lines from part one of the song Another Brick in the Wall.

All in all it was just a brick in the wall

All in all it was all just bricks in the wall (Biesen 3278)

Metaphors. The central theme of the song revolves around a feeling of isolation and abandonment from the society. This is depicted metaphorically through the use of the 'wall' to show the isolation from the society. The selected lines below represent the obstacles in the person's life whereby each barrier makes a brick in his growing wall of societal isolation.

All in all it was just a brick in the wall (1f) [it: daddy's departure]

All in all it was all just bricks in the wall (1g) [it: daddy's departure]

All in all it's just another brick in the wall (3f) [it: teachers' mistreatment]

All in all you're just another brick in the wall (3g) [you: teachers] (Biesen 3278)

Irony. The songwriter has employed irony to deliver his meaning to his audience. In a line that introduces the part 2 of the song Another Brick in the Wall, that is 'we don't need no education; We don't need no thought control,' constitutes irony (Ghorbanpour 13).

Moreover, the interlude title 'The happiest days of our lives' depicts another instant where irony has been used. This is because the content of the whole song does not describe the happy days in his life (Ghorbanpour 14).

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

The writer of the song lyrics uses features of style at various levels of language to show the main theme of the song, abandonment, and isolation, and show the mood of the song through the lines. These figures of speech show the writers mode of versioning his work; they are a palette he uses to make the song more enjoyable, through the addition of flavor to the writing, hence making the experience of singing the song fascinating.

The audience can feel what the writer experienced, can see what he had seen. Therefore, the song makes the audience to practice empathy with the writer, and get frustrated by the additional bricks that create a greater wall between the audience and the world around them. This has been realized through the proper application of figurative language that turns out to be the audience guide towards a better understanding of the song, and hence appreciate it.

Works Cited

Ghorbanpour, Amir. "We Don't Need No Education: A Stylistic Analysis Of Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick In The Wall'". Academia.Edu, 2016, www.academia.edu/26928851/We_Don_t_Need_No_Education_A_Stylistic_Analysis_of_Pink_Floyd_s_Another_Brick_in_the_Wall_. Accessed 29 Jan 2019.

Van Biesen, et al. "We don't need no education.... (Pink Floyd, The Wall) Multidisciplinary predialysis education programmes: pass or fail?." (2009)