Gave It A Name

To me, two themes come through in this song.

First - as represented by the first two verses - the two characters (Cain and Billy) have done something wrong. They then try and rationalise their actions by "giving it a name" to make them feel better. For example, Billy tells his wife that he would not have hit her if she had not criticised him. By rationalising his actions in this way, he is able to pass the blame, and therefore deal with the shame.

Second - represented by the final verse - really gets at the idea that humans are a product of our environment. If your experience is observing people that pass the blame then it is likely that you too will go through life passing the blame. Which is poisioness.

Great song!

This song has mystified me for years. Still does. I suppose Cassack's interpretation is as good as anyone's. But I'll submit a thought, though I admittedly don't really know. There might be a clue to the first two verses in the third verse (again, maybe). "Poison snake bites you, you're poisoned too." Given that the first verse is the first story in the Bible after "The Fall", and records the first sins of man after "the fall", it might be that "The Fall", or "sin", is the name. Bruce was fascinated with this idea and the theme shows up in several of his songs. The most direct is obviously "Adam Raised a Cain". He gives his own summary of Genesis 3 with... "we're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past." Perhaps in "Gave it a Name", Bruce is submitting that we still have choices, and can make the right ones. That's why the guy in the last verse can feel the poison the running in his veins, but he hasn't yet done anything like kill his brother or beat up his wife.

Again, this song is one of, if not the, most mystifying of all Bruce songs. I'm just guessing.

See, I read it not so much as rationalizing actions as admitting what they are and calling them by their proper name. What I did was murder. I\'m a murderer. I hit my wife. I\'m a wife-beater. I\'m an abuser. Sometimes we don\'t want to put labels on things but sometimes putting a label on something is important to categorize it, understand it, fess up to it. \n\nAlthough I do have to say that Cassack\'s interpretation makes some sense. Whatever\'s going on, it has to account for how giving it a name follows from, and possibly alleviates or addresses, the guilt and shame that the offenders feel lying awake at night. Whether it\'s rationalization or acknowledging what they did I\'m not sure. \n\nIn either case, what follows is this brief meditation on the idea that violence begets violence, dysfunction breeds more dysfunction, that kind of thing. \n\nThe first place I encountered this song was the intro of David Simon and Paul Haggis\' TV miniseries Show Me A Hero, where it\'s used quite movingly and effectively to introduce a show about the effects of racial segregation in Yonkers, NY. The cinematography is beautiful and this song felt very appropriate for the issue - something with a long, sordid history that continues to generate consequences and the importance of calling it what it is and admitting what\'s going on.\n\nBeautiful, moving song.