“The End” by The Doors, 1967.
From The Doors; Jim Morrison: lyrics.
Composers: Morrison, Manzarek, Krieger, Densmore.
A/N: Adult content; video has strong language.
The End Sonneta
He sang poetry with words that rocked us,
We scratched our heads listening to The End.
Its meanings we pondered and still discuss,
Though be warned some may shock, even offend.
It was deemed to be Sophoclean, Joycean;
Critics studied The End to exhaustion.
A goodbye girl song, its depth unforeseen,
Meant much more over time to Morrison.
The surviving Doors wrote about this song,
Listeners mulled it from across the sea,
Interpretations varied; none were wrong,
Metaphors found by poets far and wee.
Was Morrison’s end then within his view?
Poetry lovers, he left this for you.--Lisa Cole-Allen.
“The End’
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end of our elaborate plans
The end of ev’rything that stands
The end
No safety or surprise
The end
I’ll never look into your eyes again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of
Some stranger’s hand
In a desperate land
Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain
There’s danger on the edge of town
Ride the king’s highway
Weird scenes inside the goldmine
Ride the highway West baby
Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, to the lake
The ancient lake baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake
He’s old
And his skin is cold
The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here and we’ll do the rest
The blue bus is calling us
The blue bus is calling us
Driver where you taking us?
The killer awoke before dawn
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived
And then he paid a visit to his brother
And then he walked on down the hall
And he came to a door
And he looked inside
Father?
Yes son
I want to kill you
Mother, I want to………….
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end
It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end
“If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people
from the limited ways in which they see and feel.” –Jim Morrison.
“The End” is the grand finale of The Doors’ self-titled first album,
the most analyzed of all of Jim Morrison’s songs. This extraordinary
poem/song, Sophoclean in its drama, with a Joycean stream of
consciousness, was originally written as a farewell to his high school
sweetheart. Over time, and with numerous performances, it evolved
into deeper meanings for Morrison.
In 1969, Morrison spoke of the lyrics’ meaning: “Every time I hear that
song, it means something else to me. It started out as a simple good-bye
song... but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really
don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that
it could be almost anything you want it to be.” In an interview, Morrison
explained "My only friend/ The End": “Sometimes the pain is too
much to examine, or even tolerate... That doesn't make it evil, though
– or necessarily dangerous. But people fear death even more than pain.
It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At
the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah – I guess it is a friend.”
Band mates, keyboardist, the late Ray Manzarek, and drummer, John
Densmore spoke of “The End’s” spoken-word, controversial Oedipus
section. Said Manzarek: “He was giving voice in a rock 'n' roll setting
to the Oedipus complex, at the time a widely discussed tendency in
Freudian psychology. He wasn't saying he wanted to do that to his own
mom and dad. He was re-enacting a bit of Greek drama. It was theatre!”
Densmore wrote that the father symbolized society’s conventional values;
the mother represented basic reality: “What Jim says at the end of the
Oedipus section, which is essentially the same thing that the classic says,
kill the alien concepts, get back reality, the end of alien concepts, the
beginning of personal concepts.”
More than four decades have passed since I first listened to “The End.”
I still love this magnificent piece today, yet its effect on me is entirely
different. The song’s impressions have evolved and matured to
coincide with my own maturation.
In my youth, I viewed the song simply as a sad goodbye to an end
of a relationship. The speaker’s devastation over the breakup hurt to
the point of feeling as if he was dying. His anger at the loss escalated;
he raged enough to want to kill, to want to rape, so to speak, the
plebeian concept of lasting love which did not work in his life. Back
then, I took the lyrics literally. The narrator wanted to head west to
start all over. In the ‘sixties it was considered the ultimate freedom to
go cross country to find one’s self and a new life. I interpreted “the blue
bus” as a Volkswagen van/bus, the perfect vehicle for the long drive; the
back area was where the bed would be. Morrison himself made the
journey from his home in Florida to California to further his education
at UCLA, where he majored in film.
Throughout the song was a sense of a hopeless love: “He’s old/
And his skin is cold.” Yet the speaker seems to have hope that his love
will run away with him: “The blue bus is calling us.” Later, “Come
on baby take a chance with us/ And meet me at the back of the blue bus.”
The final verse returns to a hopelessness of reconciliation. Morrison’s
voice is sepulchral as he sings: “It hurts to set you free/ But you’ll never
follow me.” He takes a last look at what they had together, the fun, the
intensity of their lovemaking: “The end of laughter and soft lies/The end
of nights we tried to die/ This is the end.”
To this day, Morrison’s awesome poem/song is scrutinized, analyzed,
acclaimed and criticized. The symbolism and metaphors Morrison
presents are timeless and universal, leaving the reader’s mind to ponder
good and evil, freedom fraught with danger, the duality of this
existence.
Morrison utilizes water imagery to show these two views. “Waiting
for the summer rain,” cooling and cleansing, yet flooding waters
destroy and kill. He writes of “the ancient lake,” transitioning life
to death to resurrection. The snake symbolizes evil, the underworld,
the serpent devil; yet the snake is the ancient rod of Asclepius, the
symbol of healing and medicine still used today. The snake sheds
its skin, a death and rebirth. There are many repetitions of the word
“west” in this poem. It means more than simply journeying westward
for a new life. West is a classic death image in literature, and
Morrison’s different ways of presenting the word, “ride the highway
West” and “the west is the best” is thought-provoking.
I now interpret “The End” as being an actual death, but a death of
who or what? Is it the death of childhood innocence giving way to
the “Roman wilderness of pain” of adult life? Is it the death of
society’s rules, allowing escape on “the blue bus” of personal
freedom? Does “The End” refer to the end of the world? Morrison
may have meant to point out that there is an end to every beginning,
the futility of life itself, “where all the children are insane;” to be
born only to die.
“The End” is a song that is sure to mean something different to all
listeners. The lyrics of Jim Morrison will take on new meaning
according to one’s stage in life, the age and mindset of the listener.
There is no correct or incorrect interpretation. As Morrison has said:
“…it could be almost anything you want it to be.”