Eraser

Together with "A Warm Place," this is the first indication that our protagonist is nearing a conclusion to his mental battle of epic proportions with the Ruiner. This song demonstrates it in a very different way though.

Something in the beginning of the song sounds like flies, as the final calm notes of "A Warm Place" fade away. I imagine waking up from a dream, and realizing that your life was a whole lot better there than it actually is. The loud, harsh drums - he rises to carry on with his boring, painful, dysfunctional life. Though his previous realization that he is responsible for himself once had hope, the combination of his own selfish self and the antagonistic Ruiner turns that in the opposite direction, into a depression. He feels worthless, used, weary. His life is collapsing, and at this point even just going through his monotonous life is having a corrosive effect on both him and his mental stability, hence the continuous "erasing" sounds. Slowly, there is an accumulation of more and more distorted instruments: he goes through his same routine day after day, his unending cycle of boring work and control-obsession, and each day, it gets worse. To me, this is the perfect example of Reznor's fine use of repetition; in this case, displaying the ordinary events of a man's life as caustic horrors eroding him into nothingness.

And finally, the lyrics start. The first set, ending with the words "you," is our antagonist speaking: Mr. Self-Destruct/The Ruiner/the voice inside his head, whatever you want to call him. The selfish narrator envisions him as his ex-girlfriend, or anyone who has ever hurt him; a girl who used him up and left him. However, the sad reality is that the Ruiner is himself, which our narrator is now sub-consciously aware of in the little humanity he has left. He has hurt and broken himself time after time by allowing himself to fall this deep into the downward spiral. These sadistic lyrics also demonstrate the nature of the antagonist, as was previously done in "Ruiner." Notice how quiet the music is, and how calmly he speaks of destroying a person's life: he is a sociopath, it is his purpose to ruin, consume and ultimately erase.

Finally, there is the last set of lyrics; this time it's our protagonist. By sharp contrast, the music is extremely loud and harsh, and the tragic hero's voice is flooded with emotion and desperation. The fact that Mr. Self-Destruct is himself, or his dark side per se, demonstrates that he has lost himself, he has lost his humanity. Instead of looking for it, however, he continues that he hates himself, he hates what he has become and he hates his life and his daily routines and everything. Furthermore, "smash me" becomes even more sad when he declares that as opposed to losing himself, the Ruiner (himself) has smashed his humanity, and finally, that the Ruiner has erased his humanity. This is important; there is a very significant difference between "erase me" and "kill me." In that second-to-last lyric, "erase me," he comes to believe that his humanity is completely gone, no longer lost or damaged but erased. "Kill me" is what he seems to think is his only solution left. Instead of looking, instead of repairing, instead of taking initiative and responsibility, he thinks the only way to stop Mr. Self-Destruct/The Ruiner is to kill himself and end the downward spiral. These are his first thoughts of suicide. The repetition of this, and the endless distorted guitar riff getting progressively more and more distorted, goes to show his desperation getting stronger, getting the best of him, and him actually believing this is the only way to fix everything that has happened to him.

Just as a side-note, I heard somewhere that the last few times he says "kill me," the distortion turns it into a barely recognizable "help me." IF that's true, it could be his barely existent humanity making a call for help, trying either get someone else to help him out of the spiral or trying to get the protagonist to realize he won't be completely lost so long as he lives.

In any case, I think this is one of the most important songs on the album. Amazing how much emotion can be captured in so few words, and how applicable it can actually be to everyone's internal conflicts and ordinary lives in some cases.