| Okkervil River – Westfall Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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On one level, this song is about the banality of evil. As others have pointed out, to outward appearances at least, the murderer looks like a normal guy, because "evil doesn't look like anything." And he doesn't seem to have a reason for what he does. So: banal. A line that may be getting missed here, however, is "but all of these people making all these faces didn't seem like my kith and kin." The speaker feels detached from the rest of humanity and he is unable to read ordinary facial expressions. I don't want to make this too clinical, but this is symptomatic of sociopaths. Additional proof of his detachment lies in the fact that he describes the killing as "easy" and doesn't feel any guilt over it -- in fact he wants to "kill her again." I think this compares interestingly to the Terrance Malick movie "Badlands." |
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