Analysis

Analysis Essay

 

Writing music is an outlet. It’s a way to say everything that is on your mind with no criticism or judgment. Just your words and thoughts on a piece of paper. A lot of songwriters tend to write about things they feel strongly about, especially their significant other. The song “I will follow you into the dark” by Death Cab For Cutie is a beautifully written song that describes exactly how the writer, Ben Gibbard, feels about his lover. He expresses everything within him in very few words.

The first lines of the song go as follows, “Love of mine, Someday you will die, But I’ll be close behind, I’ll follow you into the dark”. The lyrics are clearly saying that his lover will eventually die, just as every human does, but no matter where what happens, he will still be with her. This shows how devoted he is to his lover. A little later in the song, Gibbard says, “If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied, Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs”, meaning that while his lover is in Purgatory (a Catholic belief where you wait for your fate), if she has no fate in neither Heaven nor Hell, he will still be there with her even after death because his love for her is enormous.

  The most eye opening line comes in the song when Gibbard says, “Fear is the heart of love”. These six words open up another whole chapter. Around these lyrics, he is talking about how he went to Catholic school and his teacher had told him this. That hints that maybe this quote is what inspired him to write this song, and it also implies that in order to truly love, you must also fear. You fear love, you fear losing love, and you fear never finding love again. It is very clear the Ben Gibbard is very much so in love with somebody who he would explore the darkness of death with.

The entire last verse is amazing. It makes you think about several things in your own life. Gibbard somehow relates to his audience and makes you think about love and growing older and filling your life with fun, memorable experiences. These four lines, “The time for sleep is now, It's nothing to cry about,  Cause we'll hold each other soon, The blackest of rooms”, are describing how he and his lover have gotten older and their time on Earth together is running out, yet he is looking forward to it because he will still have his love with him in the blackest of rooms; death.

This song, in very few words, has given the audience insight into what is going on in Ben Gibbard’s life regarding his love and relationships. This song helps the reader or listener realize how much he is in love and what he is willing to do for his lover. Throughout the song, he creates an image for the listener, letting them that much closer to him and his life. He makes the listener think about their life and their love and how far they would go for their love, but Gibbard makes it clear that he would enter a dark abyss for his lover. When Gibbard sat down and wrote everything that was inside him, his audience did not judge him or criticize him, but instead were able to see everything laying within Ben Gibbard.