The song 'The Death of Mother Nature Suite' by Kansas has obviously environmental lyrics.
Reading the text, typical criticisms come to mind, such as nature being represented as feminine and being destroyed by humanity, which is often portrayed as a masculine force.
The last two lines of the song state that 'the ignorance of man will reach an end... 'cause now we're all gonna die'. I interpret this as a morbid and extreme example of the idea of the tragic apocalypse, because we, humanity as a whole, did the harm and have to die (read as sacrifice) in order to give Mother Nature a chance to survive.
It's also got elements of nostalgia, cool!
ReplyDeleteI agree that's it is certainly a "tragic" perspective; It's pretty preachy and guilt-ridden.
I can't help but notice in the first stanza it says, "The blood is on your hands, the time has come/ And now she's gonna die". I wonder why it's not his fault! Every where else he includes himself with "we" and "our". Hmmm.
And yeah, personifying the earth as a woman, especially our mother, adds in with the shame we're suppose to be feeling. Comparing nature to a human makes it harder to destroy it.
Neato Beth.
I actually had a student write on this song (and others) in her seminar paper this spring. The study was called "Smokestacks and Marshall Stacks:
ReplyDeleteProg Rock, Ecology, and the Merchants of Doom." In it, she analyzed why that message of environmental apocalypse was so popular. Part of her argument, too, dealt with progressive rock's answer to hippie culture. Remember: all signs are historically specific, so looking at this Kansas song would demand that you reconstitute as much as possible its particular historical milieu. Why then, why that message, why that particular genre and band?