I Know Its Over by Steven Patrick Essay -- Papers

I Know It's Over by Steven Patrick Summary This is a bleak, perhaps morbid, but sensitive and intelligent song lyric, which most critics see as being about the end of fictional or fantasy relationship. But the interpretation can be much deeper, indeed, a bottomless pit for those who are inclined to wallow in helplessness and suicidal thoughts. There are four distinct sections that are not entirely connected and this leads to a variety of interpretations in linking them, enabling the audience to project their own feelings onto the words. And yet, the emotional intensity seems to produce elation[1] not depression (perhaps more in the performance than the poetry). Speculation about the meaning of the lines (as long as it is not overdone) can lead to a satisfying enjoyment. Structure The first section describes our hero's immediate state of mind with the image of his empty bed as a grave: Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head and as I climb into an empty bed Oh, well. Enough said. As if being buried alive, the melancholy protagonist feels that his life may as well be over: I know it's over - still I cling/I don't know where else I can go. Perhaps an intense relationship has come to an end, leading to thoughts of despair and suicide, but it may be less obvious. He equates his imagined forthcoming death with a feeling of utter helplessness, but it seems that death is not an option because he finds it difficult to act, as we shall see. So, although the sea wants to take me/the knife wants to slit me, he does not seem to want it. He does ask do you think you can help me? but of whom? His mothe... ...tates that love is Natural and Real: is he afraid that for such as you and I, my love it is unnatural and imaginary? Themes Typically for this writer the themes are unrequited love, isolation, loneliness, helplessness, etc. The Wildean themes are, perhaps, in the mind of the reader/listener. Indeed, the overall vagueness and ambiguity, typical of this author, together with the complexity of the structure allows for a dichotomy of interpretations. --------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] However, I acknowledge David Pinching, writing in his essay Oscar Wilde's influence on Stephen Fry and Morrissey, when he says that "Wilde represents isolation within one's own world and a grand set of theories about the most irrelevant and absurd things." [2] All italics original