| Protest the Hero – Bury the Hatchet Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"Place your justice in my palm and then I'll make fist Punch your grimaced face until every last knuckle breaks And bleeds in resistance to my sidewalk painting" This part is just to tell us what kind of character the prison guard is. Obviously he's quite brutal - just as he's expected to be for the job he's chosen in the society he lives in. "A mangled body twitching and regaining consciousness and closure Attempting composure before a bullet in the mouth answers the questions of exposure And God of Sunday School fa�ades and paycheques to validate the time I served abroad" Here we see that the prison guard used to be a soldier. He's killed people all over the world, and he did it for the money and justified it with his God. Once again, this is just as he's been taught to do, he's not a particularly malicious man - he's just what society has made him. "It all means nothing if I forget why I'm here To serve and protect my fist over fist mind under matter career That's why a man sounds kind of funny when he falls to his knees" This part is saying "I'm supposed to be mean and not think too much, so I dehumanize my prisoners by belittling their very humanity and laughing at their pain." "With his hand on his throat while he begs you to please spare his life While I explain the hardest of bodies dulls the softest of knives Then I hold up his chin and carve X's in his eyes" Here Protest the Hero is showing us how the prison guard looks at human life; just another material product with no intrinsic value. Losing it is only worth what it costs him to replace or sharpen his knives. "I swear I have compassion I've just been trained to disregard the prisoner's life Because I am the prison guard " This is the part that really pulls the rest together. A prison guard is a social worker, supposedly the fist of the law. He is only as malicious and twisted and violent as the justice he's been taught to meet out. Clearly the prison guard in Kezia is not a nice man, but its not -really- his fault. Like he says, he has compassion. But a prison guard with compassion in the society portrayed in Kezia isn't going to last long, and the guy has to make a living some how. So he sells his compassion and humanity in order to survive (just like Kezia sells her body or the Preacher/Priest in the first three songs sells empty promises) |
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