I take “Hangman” to mean they are telling this story as a sort of defense to someone judging them, like a sentencing hearing. Hangman being the title of someone who is prejudice from the get go and only looking to punish without empathy.
I agree “rubber soul” possibly Beatles reference. If I remember correctly, that album title came from the Stones as a sort of dig on their previous work maybe trying to be soulful without any real context behind it. I take this to mean as youth they were pushing their limits in the name of fun, until the games resulted in real consequences. Playing a rubber album with a razor blade; rubber is tough but the blade will cut eventually. Eventually you reap what you soul, if you are playing with life so callously it will catch up to you. Possible drug connotations, like people dabbling think it won’t catch up with them but it always does. Or possibly just the dumb things kids do for fun that would be criminal if older and caught.
The next verses similar motif but just escalating as the kids grow. Until “blind man’s bluff with the ninth brigade”. The angst sort of seams to be becoming more focused into legitimate protest, culminating at the very height into going directly against authority at the expense of being arrested and seeing loved ones perish.
The repetition of some of the games from the earlier verses seams to bring the whole story home, in that they are pleading for mercy from the hangman because they were youth deprived of opportunity and left to their own devices to find some of entertainment that the more privileged would associate with being young. I think of my youth how at times there was flirtation with rebellion and lawlessness, but being a bit more privileged provided more wholesome means to enjoy my childhood. Not everyone has that.
I take “Hangman” to mean they are telling this story as a sort of defense to someone judging them, like a sentencing hearing. Hangman being the title of someone who is prejudice from the get go and only looking to punish without empathy.
I agree “rubber soul” possibly Beatles reference. If I remember correctly, that album title came from the Stones as a sort of dig on their previous work maybe trying to be soulful without any real context behind it. I take this to mean as youth they were pushing their limits in the name of fun, until the games resulted in real consequences. Playing a rubber album with a razor blade; rubber is tough but the blade will cut eventually. Eventually you reap what you soul, if you are playing with life so callously it will catch up to you. Possible drug connotations, like people dabbling think it won’t catch up with them but it always does. Or possibly just the dumb things kids do for fun that would be criminal if older and caught.
The next verses similar motif but just escalating as the kids grow. Until “blind man’s bluff with the ninth brigade”. The angst sort of seams to be becoming more focused into legitimate protest, culminating at the very height into going directly against authority at the expense of being arrested and seeing loved ones perish.
The repetition of some of the games from the earlier verses seams to bring the whole story home, in that they are pleading for mercy from the hangman because they were youth deprived of opportunity and left to their own devices to find some of entertainment that the more privileged would associate with being young. I think of my youth how at times there was flirtation with rebellion and lawlessness, but being a bit more privileged provided more wholesome means to enjoy my childhood. Not everyone has that.