The Used: The Bird and the Worm Meaning
The Bird and the Worm Lyrics
His backpack is all that he knows
Shot down by strangers whose glances can cripple
the heart and devour the soul
All alone he turns to stone
While holding his breath half to death
Terrified...
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The bit about the backpack immediately made me think that the main character is homeless. The rest of the song seems to detail all the hardships he faces and how he has to face them alone. The whole "crawls like a worm from a bird" thing evokes a sense of helplessness and humiliation that must come with having people scorn you and being exposed to the elements and much of the crueler side of humanity.
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He fears the deeper side of himself, and therefore keeps in isolation and does not live as his whole true self, the bit of him that does exist is weaker and has no pride, like a worm in the dirt. The bird is the side of himself he is avoiding in order to survive – that person is darker and carries more pain.
Yet this is making him feel crazy, because it is a constant battle to avoid oneself.
He is paranoid and anxious from the glimpses that he sees, he must keep away from the truth and pain so that he can try live. Even if it is a meaningless empty life.
The back pack that is all that he knows, suggests how he has simplified his life to nothing more than what he can carry ( literally and figuratively). His heart is still there, but only just with the help of a few safety pins. It is not strong, but it is the only part of the truth that he still has.
He is drowning in this fight, and losing his mind… even though his escape from the “bird” is ultimately in order to save his sanity. This struggle threatens to become the end of him, he hears whispers that tell him to jump… whispers from his other side? -
his girlfriend is the bird and he is the worm. girls will destroy men if you let them. this goes back to the biblical adam and eve when eve steered adam wrong and ultimately doomed mankind forever. he is trying to escape from his girlfriend but cannot no matter what he does. he wears his heart on his backpack and she is turning it to stone. his conflict is whether or not he should get out of the relationship that is sucking the life out of him. for us (the onlookers) the decision is obvious, but for the protagonist, it is not as easy to leave "his backpack" because it is "all that he knows". aj and emilie.
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The song is probably about an emotional kid with paranoia and depression...
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The song is just about being paranoid. He's scared of everything and everyone outside and and at the same time, he's scared of himself and his own mind. He just wants to crawl away and hide. He just wants to escape all these paranoid delusions. "All alone he turns to stone while holding his breath half to death. Terrified of what's inside, to save his life he crawls like a warm from a bird."
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Well wasn't he a heroin addict? Maybe its a story about his life. Strangers whose glances can cripple could be his parents, and they were strangers to him. He's fighting his addiction. The lie with the backpack could be about when he was at his lowest. In the video i shows him with black hair, that could be him back when he did stuff like that.
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I believe this song is about being alone and feels that the person can't trust anyone so he turns into a cold person, I believe this because the lyrics say "He wears his heart safety-pinned to his backpack
his backpack is all that he knows..." that's were I got the idea of the person can't trust anyone
"Shot down by strangers whose glances can cripple
the heart and devour the soul...". This means that if he opens himself up to the world he just gets hurt.when the lyrics say he turns to stone and holds his breath half to death, meaning the person feels the world doesn't want her/him so him/her turns to stone. He/her knows that if he/her opens the feelings built up inside people would get hurt physically,mentally,and spiritually. So she/he can only slowly get away from its impending doom, its saying that either by sharing its feelings to the world or get killed by the "bird" no matter what its going to be destroyed. -
I don't know about the whole song, but when it comes to the first lines "He wears his heart safety pinned to his backpack,
His backpack is all that he knows," all I can think of is the phrase "to wear your heart on your sleeve." Personally, I'm thinking it might have something to do with that. -
No no no...
This song is about someone escaping him self. That Life its self is to scary to grasp.
"He wears his heart...." means that he's hiding him self not his heart. Hes scared of him self cause the world is a fucking scary place. How do I know.. This song describes me.
You crawl like a worm to get away from life. Life is the bird. He's trapped in his own paranoia...
In the video its like a darker version of Alice in Wonderland.
same thing.. She tries to escape life.. There just two different stories... ones a girl and this one is a boy... -
1st paragraph, he moves around a lot travelling, but he has one love and she is on his mind at all times. but his relationship with her is frowned upon, it's not proper
2nd paragraph: he is away from her because of these people who don't like the relationship, and he feels empty inside but he still tries again and again
i think the bird represents high society and he is the worm
3rd paragraph: he feels very pressured by the "bird" and he's going mad trying to live up to their expectations
4th paragraph is same as p2
i think p5 is saying that the longer he leaves his love alone his love for her grows and he is desperate to relieve his longing for her
p6 says that he thinks himself mad for leaving her
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the way i see it, is that it is about a man, maybe a teen, who has such poor self esteem that he hates himsef, and he tries to escape himself through drugs. in the end he must come to terms with who he truly is
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I like the idea that this is about a paranoid schizophrenic.
Also, in the bridge, there's the line:
"All he knows/If he can't relieve it, it grows/So it goes."
"So it goes" is a famous like from Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" about this man who basically travels through time (Tralfamadores, the aliens who abduct him, see life all at once instead of in time order like we do). The line "so it goes" is used whenever a person dies or a death is mentioned, basically giving a nonchalant reaction to death. So I feel that maybe the song is based on the novel, because the main character Billy Pilgrim is on his own because there's no one who quite understands what he's going on about.
"He wears his heart safety pinned to his backpack/His backpack is all that he knows/Shot down by strangers whose glances can cripple the heart/And devour the soul."
This could be a reference to the coldness of war where all you have is yourself and the enemy merely kills you on sight because that's all that they know.
"Out of his mind the way pushes him, whispering/Must have been out of his mind/Midday delusions of pushing this out of his head/Make him out of his mind (out of his mind)."
Most people in the novel write Billy Pilgrim off as completely nutty because he "disappears" in the middle of battle (lights on, but nobody's home), so he sometimes feels like he's going crazy while he knows that the time-warp he's experiencing is very real to his mind.
"All alone he turns to stone/While holding his breath half to death/Terrified of what's inside/To save his life/He crawls like a worm from a bird."
Billy Pilgrim is scared of all that's going on but at the same time has accepted it because there's no other option for him.
As for the crawling like a worm from a bird, this is just a great image for those who are trying to escape from a horrible fate but they, like the worms, know that running is useless, that the bird will find them; however, the worm will fight for as long as it can before it's overtaken. -
"he wears his heart saftey pinned to his backpack, his backpack is all that he knows." this means that he follows his heart, and only his heart. "shot down by strangers whos glances can cripple the heart and devour the soul" this means that he is highly emotional and can tell what people are thinking by looking at them. basically hes saying that its realy easy to acces his heart, and strangers can tell that and they take advantage of that
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I heard someone saying it was about domestic violence, it could be something along those lines like maybe even chlid abuse... 'Cause if you listen in the background near the end, you can hear a sort of beeping, like a heart moniter.
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This song sounds alot like a paratrooper landing in a warzone, and is trying to get away from enemies or sumthing. but im sure thats not it =p
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