Soldier's Things

This has to be my favorite waits song, mostly because it is written from the perspective of being at a, I think, a yard sale that this old solider is having. I myself am a big fan of yard sailing and at times can get a bit depressed seeing what peoples lives set out on a table for a few quarters an item.

"Sigh"... the precious naivete' of those yet untroubled by melancholy, grief or despair.... This song setting is an estate sale for an old soldier who has passed away. It is a commentary on the meaninglessness of life - all these things (and its not much) are all that's left of someone who lived long, served their country, tried to have a life after...yet all of it is being sold by disinterested people (relatives? Nursing home staff?) to other disinterested people for the princely sum of a dollar an item. We like to think we matter. That our lives meant something, that our legacy will continue after we are gone, that people will remember us and cherish the memories. However, too often its like this song - we are gone, and nobody cares, and the sum total of our lives is in a box for a dollar an item. Maybe some things will sell, the rest will he thrown in the trash at the end of the day, and we will be forever Truly gone. Its the dark side of life, and Tom Waits loves to wallow in it, simmer in it and serve it up to us with a sly wink, reminding us that our happy little lives are really not all rainbows and unicorns. Hint - its a reality we don't like to face, but it doesn't have to be that way...

A find this song to be very sad for some reason. Maybe this is about how war really makes life cheap?

The melancholic piano suggests to me that the soldier is decesased, and this is a yard sale with his old belongings. The understated emotion of the narrator in going from describing useless junk like an old radio, to the important stuff like war medals and cufflinks (perhaps from a wedding?) implies that it is somebody who doesn't have any emotional connection to the soldier. Perhaps the landlord he was renting from, or some distant relative, or simply somebody who collected his junk as it was being thrown out, and is now selling it.

In the bigger sense, the meaning I get out of this song is that all things go in the end. The things that one accumulates over their life are all just things, and in the end will be discarded in one way or another. The events that happen in ones life are where true meaning occurs, but it is meaning that only exists within the memories of the people who experienced and remember them. Life is fleeting.

This song was on the Jarhead soundtrack. Great song, I find it really relaxing.

extraordinary.. beautiful piano in the background

I love how understated the line about "everything's a dollar in this box" is.

It's pretty obvious, but:

I envision a war veteran having a kind of yard sale, many years after having left the service. In so doing, he is going back over all of the things that remind him of his life in the military. The line "all this radio really needs is a fuse"; "you can pound that dent out on the hood"; "everything's a dollar in this box"; it's almost as if he's really pitching selling these things, really trying to get them sold, almost as if doing so would be a kind of cathartic experience, a cleansing. That's all I got.

This song is about a yard sale, but to me, waits is really playing on the idea that a soldier is selling all of his things even though they mean the world to him, they are just things. With the lines before he covers the soldier items, what he is talking about is just really junk, an old radio, a crappy car, and without skipping a beat, he continues to apply this unvalued attitude towards his items. The thing that hits the hardest is he is giving away his medals, his medals that signify his bravery and his accomplishments. The reason he is able to do this is that a soldier is not the sum of his items, but the memories that he has the experiences. He is not a soldier because he has these things, he is a soldier because he is.

So, basically, to me it is a song where although a soldier gives away all of his items, he is still a soldier through his memories and experiences and not the items that he has from it.

I got almost the same thing as lennyfan6. The only difference is that they only mean something to him. To anyone else they are just a piece of medal. It is just a broken radio. It is just a car. But to him they are his and he earned them.