From: Tim Byron.
Date: Thu Dec 14, 2000 10:46 pm
Subject: Analysis of Owen’s Lament.
No:3172
So, I was having a nice little email with someone on this list who
rarely posts. And I was talking about what I thought Owen’s Lament
meant, and she told me that I probably should post it to this list. So
here is. It’s long. Ignore it if you have the type of attention span
Frenzal Rhomb are catering for.
“Owen’s Lament”
The title has a double meaning. The character in the song is called
Owen, and it’s his lament, his outpouring of sadness. However, the
title is also a reference to Wilfred Owen, the first world war era
English poet and soldier who wrote about the futility of war.
The music sounds like it’s from an old record in some ways…it’s got
that slight discordance that you hear in old recordings because the
tape it was recorded onto has aged. This fits in with the story the
lyrics are telling.
“Level your fretting,
I won’t be forgetting
The flush of your face
When I lifted you level to me and
A wattle tree framed your body
In whispers
Welling with the touch of the new spring”
This is Owen telling his girlfriend that he won’t forget her when he
goes off to war. The imagery of the wattle tree grounds the story in
Australia. Also as the wattle flowers at the end of winter/start of
spring, it is metaphorical for a new beginning, new loves, etc. Which
is kinda perverse seeing where Owen is going in this new spring.
“You said, kill me a dynasty
Or our love won’t mean a thing
A bullet for a diamond ring.”
This reminds me of what I learnt about ancient Sparta in my history
class. When the Spartans went off to war, apparently women would tell
their sons not to come back home unless it was “With this or on this,”
referring to the shield they carried – unless they came home with
their shield, which is basically another way of saying victorious, or
dead, they weren’t accepted back into Sparta society.
The line “kill me a dynasty” is a reference to the time period the
song is set in; royal dynasties were an integral part of World War I – after all, it started with the assassination of Arch Duke Ferninand.
Whereas World War II, Australians were fighting against dictators and
fuhrers.
“A favour promised,
A promise delivered and more
To you”
“The favour promised” that is being referred to here is sexual
in nature, similar to Owen’s later assertion of “I’ll cover your
body.”
“It’s only a war, I’ll be
Back to your shore
Before you know I’m gone
Then I’ll cover your body”
Here, Owen is reassuring his girlfriend that he’ll return from war and
“cover her body,” which is a poetic way of saying that he’ll do the
funky chicken with her. Which is kinda interesting, because perhaps it
means that the girlfriend is trying to be brave rather than thinking
like a Spartan mother, she doesn’t really want him to go.
“And if you have to go,
Please, go lightly
Keep it to a foxtrot, whether he’s a fox or not”
The vocal accenting of the phrase “go lightly,” and the way Glenn’s
voice has a catch in it, means “don’t cheat on me.” The foxtrot is a
jazz dance from the early 20th century that I think was quite
controversial in it’s day because of it’s sexual overtones. Owen’s
saying that he’s okay with her associating with other men, he
understands her needs, but “please” don’t do anything more.
“Keep it cold, keep all your heat for me
I’ll be needing it for when I’m cold, you see”
The “heat” here is a sexual one. He’s saying here that he won’t be
able to go on in the war unless she’s waiting for him…”when I’m
cold” refers to when he’s feeling hopeless and forsaken.
“Let your children remind you of me
Whether by another
Or by the ghost of me in you”
In this section of the song, Owen is giving up hope of seeing her
again. He seems to think that he has no chance of being the father to
any of her children…the two options he states are that another man’s
children will remind her of him, or “the ghost of me in you” which I
think is him hoping that the “favour promised, a promise delivered”
which he refers to earlier (their making love, framed by a wattle
tree) will make her pregnant.
“There goes my baby
I would think of you and a palm tree
Would cover your body and you”
I’m not quite sure how this bit fits in with the rest of the song.
“In love and war we are bound by a law
It goes to you, and then to yours
To recover my body
Recover my body”
This is the climax of the song, where the dynamics of the song swell
up and the guitars get heavier. “In love and war we are bound by a
law” is referring to the saying “all’s fair in love and war”...he
doesn’t really expect her to be faithful to him, though he wishes she
will, and he doesn’t expect to come back from the war. But, he does
expect her to bury his body, to pay him his last honours.
After the climax fades away, a softer feel replaces it, as voices
talk, though too softly to make out what they are talking about. The
voices sound like they’re samples from old Australian movies to me;
the voices have that peculiarly pre-60s-70s Australian accent; you see
old news footage with newsreaders with voices like that. (I’m not sure
what happened to that old accent…maybe increased exposure of US
culture destroyed it?) I don’t think what the voices are saying is
that important; I think they’re meant to be half heard, perhaps
they’re supposed to be flashes of dialogue that the character is
hearing in the delirium of death.
“She bound me up and hugged me
O how the mother loves thee
She covered my body
In a ragged flag and bloody –
O not on your life”
This part of the song is in past tense, unlike the preceding lyrics.
This is because it represents an afterlife.
These lyrics are about his wishes for his funeral…however, the
imagery of the ragged, bloody flag is a hint that his wishes weren’t
carried out. The mother, who hugged him, is Owen’s former girlfriend – who obviously didn’t keep it to a foxtrot while he was away.
“Not on your life” is repeated in order to drum it in. It is drawing
attention to the lyrics being about death and stuff, but it’s also a
reference to failure in gambling. It means that the whole perverse
gamble of Owen’s, that she’d stay true to him and that he’d kill a
dynasty and survive the war, never had any hope of success.
The piano at the end is meant to further the illusion of age…the
sound of the piano is that of an old, slightly out of tune piano, and
the recording is similar to how old recordings of piano sound. In
this, it’s somewhat reminiscent of the Smashing Pumpkins’ cover of the
old standard “My Blue Heaven”, on the “Thirty Three” single.
Furthermore, the chords used are the types of chords used in the
popular music of the period of the first world war.
tim.
and perhaps a some more insights here..
From: Glenn Richards
Date: Fri Dec 15, 2000 4:29 pm
Subject: Re: [augiemarch] Analysis of Owen’s Lament.
No:3194
And G’s award for best post of 2000 goes to Tim Byron.
I only started reading Wilfred Owen after I’d written a song originally
called “Letters From Palms”, of which the latter portion on the cd is from
an original eight track recording of it. After reading what was probably
“Dulce et Decorum est” I rather pretentiously lifted his mystique and stuck
it at the top of the lyrics. But you see the connection. I am overjoyed at
this post Tim, shit hot.
G.
P.S. “I went hunting wild/After the wildest beauty in the world,/Which
lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,/But mocks the steady running of
the hour…” – Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’