“The End” by The Doors, 1967.

From The Doors; Jim Morrison: lyrics.

Composers: Morrison, Manzarek, Krieger, Densmore.

A/N:  Adult content; video has strong language.

The End Sonneta

He sang poetry with words that rocked us,

We scratched our heads listening to The End.

Its meanings we pondered and still discuss,

Though be warned some may shock, even offend.

 It was deemed to be Sophoclean, Joycean;

Critics studied The End to exhaustion.

A goodbye girl song, its depth unforeseen,

Meant much more over time to Morrison.

The surviving Doors wrote about this song,

Listeners mulled it from across the sea,

Interpretations varied; none were wrong,

Metaphors found by poets far and wee.

Was Morrison’s end then within his view?

Poetry lovers, he left this for you.--Lisa Cole-Allen.

“The End’

This is the end, beautiful friend

This is the end, my only friend

The end of our elaborate plans

The end of ev’rything that stands

The end

No safety or surprise

The end

I’ll never look into your eyes again

Can you picture what will be

So limitless and free

Desperately in need of

Some stranger’s hand

In a desperate land

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain

And all the children are insane

All the children are insane

Waiting for the summer rain

There’s danger on the edge of town

Ride the king’s highway

Weird scenes inside the goldmine

Ride the highway West baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake

To the lake, to the lake

The ancient lake baby

The snake is long, seven miles

Ride the snake

He’s old

And his skin is cold

The west is the best

The west is the best

Get here and we’ll do the rest

The blue bus is calling us

The blue bus is calling us

Driver where you taking us?

The killer awoke before dawn

He put his boots on

He took a face from the ancient gallery

And he walked on down the hall

He went into the room where his sister lived

And then he paid a visit to his brother

And then he walked on down the hall

And he came to a door

And he looked inside

Father?

Yes son

I want to kill you

Mother, I want to………….

Come on, baby, take a chance with us

Come on, baby, take a chance with us

Come on, baby, take a chance with us

And meet me at the back of the blue bus

This is the end, beautiful friend

This is the end, my only friend

The end

It hurts to set you free

But you’ll never follow me

The end of laughter and soft lies

The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

“If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people

  from the limited ways in which they see and feel.” –Jim Morrison.

“The End” is the grand finale of The Doors’ self-titled first album,

the most analyzed of all of Jim Morrison’s songs.  This extraordinary

poem/song, Sophoclean in its drama, with a Joycean stream of

consciousness, was originally written as a farewell to his high school

sweetheart.   Over time, and with numerous performances, it evolved

into deeper meanings for Morrison. 

 In 1969, Morrison spoke of the lyrics’ meaning:  “Every time I hear that

song, it means something else to me.  It started out as a simple good-bye

song...  but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood.  I really

don't know.  I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that

it could be almost anything you want it to be.”  In an interview, Morrison

explained "My only friend/ The End": “Sometimes the pain is too

much to examine, or even tolerate... That doesn't make it evil, though

 – or necessarily dangerous. But people fear death even more than pain.

It's strange that they fear death.  Life hurts a lot more than death. At

 the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah – I guess it is a friend.”

Band mates, keyboardist, the late Ray Manzarek, and drummer, John

Densmore spoke of “The End’s” spoken-word, controversial Oedipus

section.  Said Manzarek: “He was giving voice in a rock 'n' roll setting

to the Oedipus complex, at the time a widely discussed tendency in

Freudian psychology. He wasn't saying he wanted to do that to his own

mom and dad. He was re-enacting a bit of Greek drama. It was theatre!”

Densmore wrote that the father symbolized society’s conventional values;

 the mother represented basic reality: “What Jim says at the end of the

Oedipus section, which is essentially the same thing that the classic says,

kill the alien concepts, get back reality, the end of alien concepts, the

beginning of personal concepts.”

More than four decades have passed since I first listened to “The End.”

I still love this magnificent piece today, yet its effect on me is entirely

 different.  The song’s impressions have evolved and matured to

coincide with my own maturation.

In my youth, I viewed the song simply as a sad goodbye to an end

of a relationship. The speaker’s devastation over the breakup hurt to

the point of feeling as if he was dying.  His anger at the loss escalated;

he raged enough to want to kill, to want to rape, so to speak, the

plebeian concept of lasting love which did not work in his life. Back

then, I took the lyrics literally. The narrator wanted to head west to

start all over.  In the ‘sixties it was considered the ultimate freedom to

go cross country to find one’s self and a new life.  I interpreted “the blue

bus” as a Volkswagen van/bus, the perfect vehicle for the long drive; the

back area was where the bed would be.  Morrison himself made the

journey from his home in Florida to California to further his education

at UCLA, where he majored in film.

Throughout the song was a sense of a hopeless love: “He’s old/

And his skin is cold.” Yet the speaker seems to have hope that his love

will run away with him: “The blue bus is calling us.” Later, “Come

on baby take a chance with us/ And meet me at the back of the blue bus.”

The final verse returns to a hopelessness of reconciliation.  Morrison’s

voice is sepulchral as he sings: “It hurts to set you free/ But you’ll never

follow me.”  He takes a last look at what they had together, the fun, the

intensity of their lovemaking: “The end of laughter and soft lies/The end

of nights we tried to die/ This is the end.”

To this day, Morrison’s awesome poem/song is scrutinized, analyzed,

acclaimed and criticized. The symbolism and metaphors Morrison

presents are timeless and universal, leaving the reader’s mind to ponder

good and evil, freedom fraught with danger, the duality of this

existence.  

Morrison utilizes water imagery to show these two views. “Waiting

for the summer rain,” cooling and cleansing, yet flooding waters

destroy and kill. He writes of “the ancient lake,” transitioning life

to death to resurrection. The snake symbolizes evil, the underworld,

the serpent devil; yet the snake is the ancient rod of Asclepius, the

symbol of healing and medicine still used today.  The snake sheds

its skin, a death and rebirth.  There are many repetitions of the word

“west” in this poem. It means more than simply journeying westward

for a new life. West is a classic death image in literature, and

Morrison’s different ways of presenting the word, “ride the highway

West” and “the west is the best” is thought-provoking.

I now interpret “The End” as being an actual death, but a death of

who or what?  Is it the death of childhood innocence giving way to

 the “Roman wilderness of pain” of adult life? Is it the death of

 society’s rules, allowing escape on “the blue bus” of personal

freedom? Does “The End” refer to the end of the world?  Morrison

may have meant to point out that there is an end to every beginning,

the futility of life itself, “where all the children are insane;” to be

born only to die. 

“The End” is a song that is sure to mean something different to all

listeners. The lyrics of Jim Morrison will take on new meaning

according to one’s stage in life, the age and mindset of the listener.

There is no correct or incorrect interpretation.  As Morrison has said:

“…it could be almost anything you want it to be.”