I Am the Walrus

The first and primary meaning is from Lewis Carroll’s poem, The Walrus, and the Carpenter.

This was John Lennon's favorite poem. The walrus was the "soft machine" of academia, capitalism, and government which speaks through advertising and propaganda. The carpenter is religion. The subtle point of Carroll's poem is that the Walrus and The Carpenter conspire to poison the minds of the young for self-serving purposes using seductive propaganda that exploits their natural youthful curiosity and exuberance. In the poem, the Walrus and Carpenter seduce the young oysters out of the water with ridiculous untruths about the world around them, baiting them through their curiosity about “the unknown”. After baffling and boring the oysters to death, they eat them.

The Walrus' deceptive speech in Carrol's poem describes things you would encounter in a world of goods, agriculture, commerce, trade, technology, and government- i.e.: things you would learn in College. Being young, and knowing nothing about what these strange things may be, the oysters are seduced by curiosity to know how such marvelous contradictions could actually exist in the real world of the beach (at the margins of rationality) where the Walrus and the Carpenter live and recruit their meals.

For the oysters, it will always be a false world by design that always remains just beyond their ability to perceive it directly through the senses, and hence about which they must rely on second-hand testimony from the Walrus and Carpenter’s propaganda. They come marching right up while the older, wiser oysters stay put.

The other Walrus is from Lennon’s favorite book as a kid, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In the classic pirate’s tale, Capt. Flint’s ship is called The Walrus, and the name figures throughout the tale in the action, much like The Black Pearl does in Pirates of the Caribbean, which it also inspired. The book contains maps and clues which allow a young reader to participate in the solving of the mystery of the buried treasure along with the young protagonist. This is in a long tradition, like Edgar Allen Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote stories that required the reader to solve a mystery or do cryptography along with say, Sherlock Holmes. In many cases there were challenges that the reader could submit, as often these were released in serialized form in newspapers and journals Just like record albums.

Lennon said he wrote the song in response to an article in The Daily Mail, Lennon’s favorite newspaper, about an 11th grade teacher who had used Beatles lyrics in Modern History class. Lennon wrote I Am the Walrus as a challenge and was recorded to have said:” Let’s see those little fuckers figure this one out.”

Given what I’ve said before, I Am the Walrus in the Lewis Carroll sense is about Advertising and Propaganda’s exploitation of youth. It provides coded examples in Lennon’s style and calls out high-profile personalities by name but in deep code.

I Am the Walrus in the Robert L Stevenson sense means “I have made this song like a cryptographic challenge for you to decipher with my somewhat unreliable guidance, because I’m deliberately hiding stuff and using lingo and argot to convey multiple meanings.” Lennon mentions Poe in the song, just in case you missed the Treasure Island references in the word “Walrus”, which along with Lewis Carroll, was often cited by Lennon as inspirational to him as a youth. Via "Walrus", he hat tips another favorite: The Gold Bug, by Poe, who did the same thing as Treasure Island as far as using cryptic clues and multimedia like maps and pictures and probably inspired Stevenson in the first place.

So, let’s take a quick look at I Am the Walrus from that perspective. The whole first line matches lyrics and cadence with Marching to Pretoria, a propaganda song popular with British forces during the Boer War, which for students of history (remember who he wrote the song to), was a genocide. That genocide was made to sound much nicer to those who carried it out if singing a catchy tune. It played better at home too.

See how they run like pigs from a gun plays on Boer/Boar, and of course a Boar is a male Pig. So basically, British Troops marched from Cape Town to Pretoria singing this song, shooting any Boers they could find, and sending the rest running for their lives. “I’m crying” is Lennon saying how propaganda and popular media sanitizes evil and victimizes the innocent. It is causing an existential and creative crisis for him personally. Did you notice that "Sgt Pepper" images and paraphernalia that come with the album (Statue on cover, insert, mustache, uniform, etc) are based on an Edwardian Era British military officer of the Boer War period, James Melville Babington? Clearly not a random choice in this reading.

Perhaps Lennon felt that the early Beatles' music was being used something like "Marching to Pretoria" in the modern context, providing cheerful distraction from Vietnam to a gullible youth- the oysters. So Lennon took his time setting this one up, didn't he?

Once you see this, the rest of the images fall right into line. Corporation T-Shirt? The old Brian Epstein created, suit wearing Beatles. Stupid bloody Tuesday? The day before Wednesday morning at 5:00. You’ve let your face grow long? Since the funeral scene depicted on the cover of Sgt Peppers, you’re no longer as marketable now that you’ve abandoned the mop-top boy-band personae.

He mentions Poe getting kicked around, just as he has been. Recall that Poe died as a result of an election fraud scheme called "cooping". The song was written as a challenge to 11th grade Modern history students who may know this. Is Lennon suggesting that Paul, whose funeral is perhaps depicted on SPLHCB's cover, was "cooped" as well? There's more. In certain circles it is speculated that Poe may have faked his own death. I digress.

The album art of MMT shows John wearing the Walrus costume (Paul is a Hippo), and later Lennon lyrics/clues("another clue for you all") in Glass Onion contradict that saying "the Walrus was Paul". What gives? So there's a broader pattern of Lennon's usage here that reveals its central importance to his puzzle.

Students of Beatles history will note that an early stage name for John was "Long John" (ref: Treasure Island- Long John Silver). Paul's was Paul Ramon, and George's was Carl Harrison. After Quarrymen I and II, and then Johnny and the Moondogs in the fall of '59, it was The Silver Beat, then Long John and the Silver Beetles, then just the Silver Beetles, and finally The Beatles, with an "a" by September 1960. So Treasure Island has been there for John from the start, hasn't it?

So has Alice in Wonderland. The "Eggman" refers to Humpty Dumpty which is chapter 6 in ‘Through the Looking Glass’, by Lewis Carroll. Humpty provides Alice with a solution to the nonsense poem Jabberwocky. Hmm. You don't say...Now does it make more sense why he would say "I am the Eggman"? Fans of Lewis Carroll didn't need the nudge, but many dismiss this song without a thorough treatment. I'm not making this stuff up, it's quite clearly there if you happened to research Lennon's lifelong interest in authors like Carroll, Lear, Stevenson and Poe.

To protect himself, he throws the usual Carroll soft rope like Goo Goo g'Joob. The phrase: "Goo goo g'Joob" (hitherto unidentified by all commentators, sadly) is from Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Good luck figuring that out. They make sense to him but it's above our pay grade. It's misdirection. Those maguffins are present to make the song plausibly sound like the ravings of an acid trip or perhaps directly inspired by Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. He did say he was the Eggman, right? Perfect. He's provided a coded solution, which as in the case of Alice, can mean different things depending how far down the rabbit hole you've gone . For example, he lobs a few hand grenades at infamous people of the day, but the average person didn’t then know that Diana Dors was the coded Pornographic Priestess, deeply involved in the Profumo Affair, organized crime (the Kray twins), and Jimmy Saville. Just to make sure we got the hint, she is depicted on the cover of SPLHCB (like Babington). There was a "City Policeman" named Norman Pilcher (aka "Semolina Pilchard") who had been actively framing pop stars like John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Donovan, etc, etc. Pilcher is clearly the "Mister City Policeman".

I'm quite sure they knew they were named, though, so Lennon is content to let his jabs sail over hippies' heads. To a certain extent, John put something in there for everybody regardless of background or how much you knew of his code. Cigarette advertising? Sure. The joker laughing at choking smokers. Environment? What’s the prob, you can get a tan from standing in the (polluted, acid) rain. Hollywood? Seen the cover? Is there anybody else you want to piss off, John?

Taking inspiration from Carroll, he deliberately set out to give himself some plausible denial, yet make his points in code. “Oh yeah, I was on acid.” When he says that, it’s usually a signal to read deeper.