The Doors: The End Meaning
The End Lyrics
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again
Can you picture what...
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Think there's more than meet the eyes in this song. To get a real feel, think you need to understand occultism. During his time there was a lot 'crossing over' rituals practised, mainly all with Satan worshipping.
The song is extremely similar to Stairway to Heaven with hidden meanings. The forest, West, snake, women, mother, shininess, mountain, road, pathway, all follow occultism.
It's about transisting over to the other side, the evil in the passover of death. Supposivly there are certain ways to get in tune with Satan when you die according to their ways. Jim's talkin about meeting that side when its all said and done. He's telling you how, or reciting the passages of versus in practises. Making a song out of it. -
The blue bus could be representative of the nam bus or the bus to the insane asylum
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It is cool to read all the different insights of what a person was thinking when they write. I write poetry and I am thinking many things and feelings at the same time. I read that he wrote the beginning of the song to his first girlfriend, not Pam, I forget her name. So the end was about the end of a relationship. I thought at one time it was death, it was not. I think that Oliver Stone movie was a sham. People think that Jim Morrison was the person in the movie. Just like Natural Born Killers is just how a serial killer act. He did the same crap in JFK Compare NBK to The Doors movie and you will see the BS about Jim Morrison. The band members even said it.
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To me, this isn't about death, but about a relationship breakout. Long ago I had a very possessive and jealous girlfriend, our relationship was so deep it still shivers me to this day. She treated us both as one, but most likely it was like she treated ME as becoming part of HER(thus "this is the end my only friend"). I then felt like I was sacrificing my own self to fuel the plans of the unique individual she had created. At first I thought that could be some selfish thinking of mine and that she wasnt that.. 'evil', but this was reviewed later.
Anyway, most of my thoughts at that time were about my childhood, as in 'how did I went from that beauty, bright, active and strong-willed kid into this depressed zombie-worker?'. That was just the point were many of my old dreams were brought back to the surface and helped me become what I am now ("all the children are insane, waiting for the summer rain").
I wanted to break up, but I was really uncertain about her real intentions. I didn't want to be mean, as I realized that all the flaws I could now see could had just have been her true self during all the long time we spent together. I liked her so much, but I really couldn't sacrifice my own life to live hers, we had many superficial compatibilities, but this was a major flaw that made it all unbearable ("It hurts to set you free, but you will never follow me"). The whole kill father/fuck mother paragraph fits this, also.
I still have no clue about the snake and the lake (maybe an aerial view of a mass of zombies, like the one I was, walking towards their doom?) and the blue bus. -
I first heard this song and the album in India in 1967. It is still one of my all time favorite songs and albums. The Morrison vocals are, of course, great but the dreamy instrumental parts of it are out of this world also. I have always thought the song was about a drug trip or trips or a life of drugs. "We'll take care of the rest." A bad trip will produce the kinds of images that sear through the body of the song. It may also be about Oedipal feelings and a 7-mile highway to Santa Monica on the blue city bus, but mostly I think it depicts a drug trip. The downside of the song is that it may glorify tripping out too much, but it also hints at the now widely understood devastation that halucinogens (sp)can cause to the brain chemistry of our kind. Of course a bad trip can also result in the ultimate "The End," death. (Sadly, we cannot confirm this by talking to Jim Morrison but the manner of his own end helps prove it.) Despite all this, I still love this haunting song and the album.
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I first heard this song and the album in India in 1967. It is still one of my all time favorite songs and albums. The Morrison vocals are, of course, great but the dreamy instrumental parts of it are out of this world also. I have always thought the song was about a drug trip or trips or a life of drugs. "We'll take care of the rest." A bad trip will produce the kinds of images that sear through the body of the song. It may also be about Oedipal feelings and a 7-mile highway to Santa Monica on the blue city bus, but mostly I think it depicts a drug trip. The downside of the song is that it may glorify tripping out too much, but it also hints at the now widely understood devastation that halucinogens (sp)can cause to the brain chemistry of our kind. Of course a bad trip can also result in the ultimate "The End," death. (Sadly, we cannot confirm this by talking to Jim Morrison but the manner of his own end helps prove it. Despite all this, I still love this haunting song and the album.
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I've always understood it to be about the end of a relationship with a girlfriend of Jim's at the time -- although it has obvious Vietnam War and drug connotations. If Jim used to take a blue bus out to the desert to get stoned, "ride the snake to the lake" could refer to the winding highway itself. Vietnam is suggested in "desperately in need of some strangers hand in a desperate land" and "lost in a Roman wilderness of pain and all the children are insane waiting for the summer rain". During the war period in Vietnam (and Cambodia), children were often schooled/indoctrinated with Communist party ideology -- sometimes to the point of denying their parents and treating the Communist leaders as their moral guides. The summer rain in the summer monsoon season. The "desperate land" and the "Roman wilderness of pain" are Vietnam -- analogies to the cruelties of war. Alternatively, they could just mean the desert.
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Or maybe it could be that Jim Morrison was a talentless, infantile, narcissistic drunk, and that "The End" is simply the culmination of a lifetime of half hatched bullshit "poetry" pseudo intellectual babbling, which was, if he had any is only strong suit. Perhaps it is about nothing...just a grouping of random words, thoughts and ideas deemed significant by their very obscurity and nonsense, the listener grasping for meaning in the lyrics where there is none not wanting to admit that it is dribble lest he or she come off as not "getting it". When I was 13, I found the Doors to be compelling. Going back and listening to them now...I find them to be at their best mediocre. Jim Morrison was just another hack with a pretty face.
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I think this song is about society and the way it works and what is going to happen to it.
"all the children are insane" refers to some sort of psychic connection we all may experience and when we do go through that, then everyone will become insane and then the end....anyway that's my interpretation.. -
This song is about Drugs, Transcending life into death, talking to god or to the drugs ingested (driver where you takin us?). The Blue Bus is a drug. The Oeuphidous complex is also a part, as well as being comedic (greek comedy.)Morrison believed death always is at our heels, and when we die we are free, and it follows us no longer. All the children are insane is a refrence to how each generation disapproves and dosent understand those after it. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Yeah.
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The snake could represent primortial human fear, so he's saying challenge your fears, that's how you learn. I think the ancient lake is the Universal Mind of knowledge that exists all around us and where Edgar Cayce and other prophets hailed their information about the earth/future. the blue bus could be your soul and the driver is your spirit guide (Jim's was a shaman that jumped into his body)
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It's mostly about death. The comfort death will bring. From all the pain and misery from life. The blue bus that's calling us is the sky. Driver where you taking us is GOD or whatever you believe in. As well as Desperately in need of some strangers hand. My favorite part of the whole song is "can you picture what will be so limitless and free." He is telling us not to be so afraid of death it's a part of life......You will then be free of this hell we call earth.
Lost in a roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
That pretty much about when we were kids we thought that when we grow up things are going to be so great but, as Jim says all the children are insane. Waiting for the summer rain......Summer rain meaning that life is going to be great and finding out that it sucks growing up. Bitter sweet.
The snake is a Highway it's old and it's skin is cold.
In ways he's talking about setting your mind free but people are too afraid to and he knew that. It hurts to set you free but you'll never follow me. -
Before I get to ‘The End', let's take a look at the album as a whole, it begins with Jim probing life as something to be lived, yet always recognizing that life is mystical and made of many realities. But living doesn't allow absolute freedom, and people constantly search for sanctuary. Since neither love nor sanctuaries offer security, Jim turns to ‘The End' as his beautiful and only friend.
‘THE END'
Surrendering to a sense of hopelessness so beautifully rendered in the song's opening, Jim takes the hand of his only friend, the end.
The imagery and music then moves on as Jim seeks freedom, riding the King's highway, riding the snake to the ancient lake, going west, and answering the call of the blue bus.
(The Blue Bus may be a reference to a vessel sailing through the underworld, not unlike the boat that ferried the souls of the dead down the river Styx. On the other hand, and most probably, it refers to a bus route that ran through LA to the beach.)
Then the mood shifts to an eerie look at original evil in humans as we take a journey with a killer down a hall in a place no longer a sanctuary – the home. Jim then makes the transition to the philosophical level with the human taking a face from the ancient gallery (something that was done on the ancient Greek stage). But the calmness of the mask is shattered when the killer completes his journey; telling his father he wants to kill him and then confronting his mother….
These are themes of the classic Oedipal story…
“Oedipus, his father's murderer, his mother's lover, solver of the Sphinx's riddle”
Take it as killing the father means killing those things instilled in you but are not of yourself, and sexually conquering the mother means returning to your essence, which can't lie to you.
Jim's message was act now, search later. Life is a journey, but any journey will be painful. Life is pain, love is pain, and fear prevents people from experiencing life, from accepting what The Doors ultimately come to realize,
that we are all just riders on the storm. -
"Seven Horses seem...to - be - on - the -mark"
What's the meaning of this?
(Oh, of that line...not OF this website!!)
Thanks!
-GP -
Firstly this is toughest song to decipher as far as Jim Morrison is concerned..it can be taken the way you like to. Its meaning differs within yourself depending on whether you are high or low, that's the magic of Jim Morrison. To me the song is about life and as throughout our life death overshadows us hence it can be called song of death too. It depicts the despate life we live...starting as a 'dog without a bone' we look for friends..' desperately in need of some stranger's hand...in a desperate land'..we look for friends in your life and maybe in your death too..then the song depicts the kind of life we live...meaningless..depthless...vulnerable. Jim starts right from the childhood.."Lost in a roman wilderness of pain...and all the children are insane"
To me 'snake' means our pleasures..gribbs..and the ancient lake symbolises end of that journey of chasing our pleasure..simply it symbolises death...
"Ride the snake to the ancient lake"
"The west is the best"
west symbolises abundance..luxury ..pleasure..
"the blue bus is calling us"...our life is a journey..we are aboard a bus of pleasure ..luxury...abundance..strangely we don't know where it is taking us ultimately..that's true for all of us
"Driver where you are taking us?" because we have lost control of ourselves..our lives..as he rightly says..
"Come here and we will do the rest"
then he tells a story...maybe he tries to depict himself..don't try to justify the the killer who wants to kill his father or fuck his mother...don't try to investigate what was wrong with Jim Morrison because we are aboard a blue bus ourselves...lets try to understand what he wanted to mean...what really he wanted to kill...his father or the things he got from his father...teachings..beatings...morals...so called values..its true for all of us..he wanted to wake us up...open our eyes to see...to choose..to acqire wisdom..of life..of death..
But we will never follow him..he knows that too...so this is the end of song..this is the "End of nights we tried to die"
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