I really enjoy the sense of scale in this song.
It's about one girl, one girl among millions killed, yet Mangum uses her so poetically that it can't help but be a metaphor for everyone who was killed in the Holocaust. Innocent people cruelly slaughtered for no apparent reason, with great irony in the guns which rained down on everyone and more specifically their late timing.
As the song progresses, we're reminded more and more of the cosmic significance of this - to keep a long story short, it's zero. "The Earth looks better from a star
That's right above from where you are"
The whole genocide is much more tolerable when you don't connect, or empathise, but just look at it from afar. Possibly a metaphor for the Allied powers who chose to do very little about the Holocaust until they actually had to (it's so sad to see... filled with flies)
I really enjoy the sense of scale in this song. It's about one girl, one girl among millions killed, yet Mangum uses her so poetically that it can't help but be a metaphor for everyone who was killed in the Holocaust. Innocent people cruelly slaughtered for no apparent reason, with great irony in the guns which rained down on everyone and more specifically their late timing. As the song progresses, we're reminded more and more of the cosmic significance of this - to keep a long story short, it's zero. "The Earth looks better from a star That's right above from where you are" The whole genocide is much more tolerable when you don't connect, or empathise, but just look at it from afar. Possibly a metaphor for the Allied powers who chose to do very little about the Holocaust until they actually had to (it's so sad to see... filled with flies)