The Dark Side of the Ward

As I furiously attempted to finish my English reading in our family computer room the other night, I found it extremely annoying that my dad insisted on playing his music louder than either of us needed.  Then again, we always joke that I am like his parent, always asking him to turn his music down; he might just be deaf.  Before I decided to passive-aggressively stomp away, I took a moment and removed my mental block from his music.  He was listening to Pink Floyd's album, Dark Side of the Moon, which covers multiple themes such as life, death, and, most of all, madness.

"Breathe," a very slow moving song, states "Only if you ride the tide,...you race toward an early grave."  This parallels the endless monotony of life the patients feel day after day on the ward.  They feel that they have no purpose, and do not want a purpose because they feel that it will ultimately lead to their death.

The song "Speak to Me" features multiple chilling screams and the "Brain Damage" is said to be spoken from the point of view of a crazy person.  It deals with lobotomies as well.  At one point, they sing, "The lunatic is in my head/ You raise the blade, you make the change,/ You re-arrange me 'till I'm sane," taking on the persona of a patient of a lobotomy.  They also assert, "There's someone in my head but it's not me," displaying the change of a person after a lobotomy treatment.

Lastly, in the song Eclipse, they state, "There is no dark side of the moon really./Matter of fact it's all dark."  This parallels the sense of hopelessness that all the patients have, not only in the ward, but also in their entire life.

I have just begun to draw the parallels between these two works, and I challenge you all to find more.