On the whole, I'm with Ballsong. This is a very sinister song. That said, TimTheSurvivor's reading is, I fear, a bit biased--which is not to say that the singer, the protagonist, may not have suffered some such trauma as child abuse, only that the precise nature and origins of his anger can't be readily identified.
Whatever it is, the literal interpretation is probably the best to start with: the protagonist-- Gabriel's character--is evidently a dangerous psychopath or a sociopath, and he appears to be threatening someone--quite likely a woman--who's driving a car, while episodically making these oracular and vaguely intimidating comments about his state of mind. There's a tendency in the interpretations above to assume that the car and the wheel and the driving are all metaphorical--I don't see any reason to suppose they are. I think instead that we are witnessing some variety of kidnapping or carjacking, possibly a prelude to violence, being perpetrated by a deeply disturbed individual who's alternately muttering semi-coherently and screaming at his intended victim.
I have also felt (and for this I admit there's perhaps less evidence in the lyrics themselves) that the driver/victim is not an acquaintance of her captor's prior to the incidents which find them in the car together. I know that the speaker addresses her as though they were lovers or intimates of some sort, but I can't help feeling that that's only further evidence of his insanity: he's mistaken her, or is using her as a substitute, for some other figure, real or imagined, who he believes to have wronged him in some way.
That's not unusual, is it--a violent lunatic with a powerful misogynistic streak who takes out his frustrations with womankind on a single woman. As for "digging" and enlisting her "support"... yes, I think he could very well be digging a grave; he could also be imagining, in his desperation and delusion, that somehow this woman can help him, that he can make her love him and empathize with him; or that somehow he can, through her, expiate the "hurt" that haunts him. Chilling, really.
On the whole, I'm with Ballsong. This is a very sinister song. That said, TimTheSurvivor's reading is, I fear, a bit biased--which is not to say that the singer, the protagonist, may not have suffered some such trauma as child abuse, only that the precise nature and origins of his anger can't be readily identified.
Whatever it is, the literal interpretation is probably the best to start with: the protagonist-- Gabriel's character--is evidently a dangerous psychopath or a sociopath, and he appears to be threatening someone--quite likely a woman--who's driving a car, while episodically making these oracular and vaguely intimidating comments about his state of mind. There's a tendency in the interpretations above to assume that the car and the wheel and the driving are all metaphorical--I don't see any reason to suppose they are. I think instead that we are witnessing some variety of kidnapping or carjacking, possibly a prelude to violence, being perpetrated by a deeply disturbed individual who's alternately muttering semi-coherently and screaming at his intended victim.
I have also felt (and for this I admit there's perhaps less evidence in the lyrics themselves) that the driver/victim is not an acquaintance of her captor's prior to the incidents which find them in the car together. I know that the speaker addresses her as though they were lovers or intimates of some sort, but I can't help feeling that that's only further evidence of his insanity: he's mistaken her, or is using her as a substitute, for some other figure, real or imagined, who he believes to have wronged him in some way.
That's not unusual, is it--a violent lunatic with a powerful misogynistic streak who takes out his frustrations with womankind on a single woman. As for "digging" and enlisting her "support"... yes, I think he could very well be digging a grave; he could also be imagining, in his desperation and delusion, that somehow this woman can help him, that he can make her love him and empathize with him; or that somehow he can, through her, expiate the "hurt" that haunts him. Chilling, really.