5. Theme
Paint It Black
As I noted in the introduction to 5. Theme, a poem that's obscure or challenging is often best analyzed specifically in terms of theme. The lyric “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” (by Death Cab for Cutie) has a number of obscure statements and thus is a good case where an essay on theme is appropriate.
Paint It Black
“I Will Follow You Into The Dark” is simply written yet gets at deep emotions. In the chorus and the three main stanzas, the singer addresses a loved one who’s about to die. He promises to follow this person into the afterlife. The song’s not accompanied by any complex background music, and the singer’s voice is serious and sincere. Despite the song’s apparent simplicity, it’s complex mix of perspective, narrative, metaphor, and image deepen our understanding of the poet’s resolve to follow his lover into the dark, uncharted territory of death.
While the vocabulary and the spatial details in the first stanza are relatively simple, they hint at the puzzle of death’s obscurity. Most of the words are monosyllabic (and thus create the illusion of simplicity), yet the stanza leaves us with mysteries, intriguing us and making us feel the challenge and adventure in what he’s proposing. The spatial details are clear and simple: he will be “close behind” her after she dies and he will “follow” her “into the dark” (I am assuming it is a female, although it could be a male). Yet where is this “dark”? He gives different ideas about where it might be, yet he eliminates these possibilities, and ends up with the same simple notion he started with. This may be appropriate, for who really knows what (if anything) comes after life?
The first stanza also offers an alternative perspective by rejecting traditional ways people describe death. The first word is “No” and the two settings he describes are typical, if not stereotypical: “blinding light” and “tunnels to gates of white.” The singer replaces these with the image of them holding hands—desperately, as if they were making a lover’s leap into the darkness. Yet he isn’t suggesting suicide, for they’re waiting for “the hint of a spark”—which isn’t a very clear reference, although it does rhyme with “dark” in the earlier and later stanzas. The rhyme works, for it juxtaposes the two words and the two ideas: the light that a spark gives is a small yet optimistic alternative to the dark. It also might hint at more light to come, for a spark can also light a fire. At least it’s better than a black nothing.
The first chorus shifts our attention from two rejected clichés to two mini-narratives which introduce more complex situations. In the first three lines of the chorus he combines the cosmic settings of Heaven and Hell with the ordinary setting of a hotel or motel. He suggests that the big capitalized Systems don’t care about her. There may even be an indirect reference to Jesus and the manger, for when Joseph and Mary couldn’t find a place to stay, they were allowed to stay in a barn. Yet here Heaven, or the Christian system in which Jesus supplies the Grace that opens the door to Heaven, doesn’t let them in. Heaven and Hell “decide” to close their doors to the woman, just as a motel manager might put on the “NO” before the “VACANCY” sign. Perhaps this is because the woman doesn’t believe in religious doctrine, or perhaps the doctrine isn’t open enough to accept those who have different points of view. In any case, we once again come back to “No,” to a negation of the traditional afterlife scenarios.
The next three lines of the chorus suggest a different narrative involving a nautical metaphor for death. After the woman dies, her soul will “embark.” This leads us to rethink what seems like a rejection of spirituality in the previous lines, for at least he believes she has a spirit or soul (we are never told what her beliefs are). This makes sense of the previous idea—that even though he doesn’t expect she will encounter a bright light or a tunnel, he thinks that there will be a “spark” of life that remains after the body dies.
The final two stanzas supply a sustained narrative that explains the singer’s reasons for rejecting traditional beliefs. We see why he chooses mystery and ambiguity over religious doctrine: his Catholic schooling was as strict as “Roman rule” and it emphasized fear rather than love. The strict ‘lady in black’ is a betrayal of Mary, Mother of Grace, so it’s no wonder he rejects this betrayal and focuses on love instead. All of this explains why he earlier rejected the traditional Heaven and Hell scenario. He ‘never goes back’ to a traditional way of thinking, and chooses instead to broaden his vision by travelling with his beloved all over the world, from “Bangkok to Calgary,” that is, from a country that is completely foreign, to another North American city closer to Gibbard’s home state of Washington.
This reference to travel and places leads to the image of worn shoes, which is at once realistic and metaphoric. That the soles of her shoes are worn down suggests that her body is worn down, to the point where death is about to overcome her—which is emphasized by the word “now.” The “sleep” he refers to is the sleep of death, as in Hamlet’s famous “To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause…”. This ‘rub’ is not some vague possibility, for she is at the moment of death, of ‘shuffling off her mortal coil.’ Yet she does not have to face this alone, which is the point of the poem: death may be terrifying, yet she is not alone. Love doesn’t depend on time, place, or school of belief. As the pagan Latin poet Virgil wrote two thousand years ago, love conquers all.
At the end of the song, he uses the colour black to reassure her that he will be with her till the end, and beyond. He says that he will stay with her in “the blackest of rooms,” just as he says earlier that he will hold her hand and wait with her for a “spark,” that together they will pass by the “NO VACANCY” sign, and that together they will look out from the dock onto the dark waters. The song ends with a return to the idea of darkness, in this case the “blackest of rooms.” Black conjures the dark mystery of death, and also perhaps the sadder, darker, deeper feelings he will soon experience in the room as her body goes cold. As her soul vanishes into the obscure darkness, he will wait in a similar darkness, lost in mourning, waiting for a spark.
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Scratch Outline
Paint It Black
Despite the song’s apparent simplicity, it’s complex mix -- of perspectives, narratives, metaphors, and images -- deepen our understanding of the poet’s resolve to follow his lover into the dark, uncharted territory of death.
1. While the vocabulary and the spatial details in the first stanza are relatively simple, they hint at the puzzle of death’s obscurity.
2. The first stanza also offers an alternative perspective by rejecting traditional ways people describe death.
3. The first chorus shifts our attention from two rejected clichés to two mini-narratives which introduce more complex situations.
4. The next three lines of the chorus suggest a different narrative involving a nautical metaphor for death.
5. The final two stanzas supply a sustained narrative that explains the singer’s reasons for rejecting traditional beliefs.
6. This reference to travel and places leads to the image of worn shoes, which is at once realistic and metaphoric.
7. At the end of the song, he uses the colour black to reassure her that he will be with her till the end, and beyond.
Charon, 1876, by Hans Thoma. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Source: Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur. From Wikimedia Commons.