Misery is the River of the World Analysis
Misery is the River of the World
The song “Misery is the River of the World” talks about how unkind mankind can be, how sad man is while he lives, and how unreasonably people claim being very knowledgeable about God. Consequently, this mind-opening song can be considered as a musical and sonic summation of short stories titled “The Lament,” “The Suicide,” and “The Three Hermits.” “The Lament” can be connected to this song through the lines “Like the thistles that are growing 'round the trunk of a tree, all the good in the world, you can put inside a thimble, and still have room for you and me.” These lines say that the good things left in this world are so little that it metaphorically fits inside a thimble with still sufficient room for two persons. In addition, an amazing play of words is used to describe the short story in “If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.” This is an impeccable statement to pertain to “The Lament.” The main character struggling to have somebody to listen to his grief only to end up just trying to obtain sympathy from his mare because people don’t care, is exactly what the line is summarizing. Regarding “The Suicide,” which shows how the main character’s desire to commit suicide, which impliedly rooted from his being sad in his life, also affects other people around him, the line “Call no man happy ‘til he dies” says why the main character tries to kill himself. “For want of a bird, the sky was lost; for want of a nail, a shoe was lost; for want of a life, a knife was lost; for want of a toy, a child was lost” says small actions can result in large consequences. In the short story, the desire of the main character to end his life resulted figuratively to the loss of lives of his loved ones and of the society as well. With respect to “The Three Hermits,” the line “The higher that the monkey can climb, the more he shows his tail” of the song describes how the bishop, who knows how high
The song “Misery is the River of the World” talks about how unkind mankind can be, how sad man is while he lives, and how unreasonably people claim being very knowledgeable about God. Consequently, this mind-opening song can be considered as a musical and sonic summation of short stories titled “The Lament,” “The Suicide,” and “The Three Hermits.” “The Lament” can be connected to this song through the lines “Like the thistles that are growing 'round the trunk of a tree, all the good in the world, you can put inside a thimble, and still have room for you and me.” These lines say that the good things left in this world are so little that it metaphorically fits inside a thimble with still sufficient room for two persons. In addition, an amazing play of words is used to describe the short story in “If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.” This is an impeccable statement to pertain to “The Lament.” The main character struggling to have somebody to listen to his grief only to end up just trying to obtain sympathy from his mare because people don’t care, is exactly what the line is summarizing. Regarding “The Suicide,” which shows how the main character’s desire to commit suicide, which impliedly rooted from his being sad in his life, also affects other people around him, the line “Call no man happy ‘til he dies” says why the main character tries to kill himself. “For want of a bird, the sky was lost; for want of a nail, a shoe was lost; for want of a life, a knife was lost; for want of a toy, a child was lost” says small actions can result in large consequences. In the short story, the desire of the main character to end his life resulted figuratively to the loss of lives of his loved ones and of the society as well. With respect to “The Three Hermits,” the line “The higher that the monkey can climb, the more he shows his tail” of the song describes how the bishop, who knows how high