Much like a novel, when an album is centered around a singular concept it gains an atmosphere. I am sure you have all felt it before—in both mediums—when you become so engrossed in the story that you can feel it in your chest; a world bubble the narrative has adopted inside you, where it lives temporarily, or forever, depending on how much it touches you. Over the last month, I have been living perpetually in the world created by The Wall. Their third best selling album, The Wall creates a rabid fan out of the casual Floyd fan, with its singular cohesive story containing highs and lows that mimics real life like so few other albums can do with every track. What kept me listening to this album over and over, however, was its familiarity with something else that was already living inside me: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It was listening to “Hey You” that I first grasped onto the strings of similarity. Both pieces—while not directly about the Berlin Wall—have loose roots tied to it, which make the similarities so much more interesting, showing that two mediums can, equally, reflect an object or idea.
The Wall in Floyd’s album is metaphorical, representing the wall the Water’s had to build around himself to strengthen him because of childhood coddling, fortified later by the oppression he felt from teachers and authority who would do anything to cause him harm. This parallels with The Handmaid’s Tale and Atwood’s character, Offred, who was given blinders to the world, walls which limited her growth and, in turn, caused her to distrust everyone around her, isolating her behind her own wall.
Hopelessness and desperation run parallel through both pieces, expressed in the oppression the protagonists are subjected to, which stem from teachers and authority figures. The protagonists are in conflict with these figures who are willing to do whatever it takes, resort to whatever contemptible means necessary, to oppress and hold back the protagonists, subjecting them to both physical and mental anguishes, from beatings and mutilations to mental manipulations and indoctrination The cumulative shit everyone dumps on the protagonists is just “another brick in the and the frustrations they lay on the characters build their walls higher and stronger. However, there is a female the protagonists find strength in, looking to them to find the nerve to go on, who spoke of the world changing again into a better place; this female, inevitably, became lost to the protagonists. Even the days that are the best days of their lives are rife with tragedy, complications, and heartbreak: nothing has ever been (or seemingly will ever be) easy for them.
“In the Flesh”, and “The Trial” capture moods presented in The Handmaid’s Tale—in perhaps the most absurd and disturbing section of Atwood’s tale—the “Praystravaganza”, with its message of severe difference and it’s insane circus feel— madness incarnate. The protagonists live in societies which encourage a robotic mental and live in a state of denial, attempting to outrun their greatest fear: Loss of identity/individuality with the threat of exposure to their peers and superiors being the penultimate punishment. The spirit of rebellion is explored by the protagonists, the thrill of running and grasping onto freedom—as fleeting as it initially is—and rebelling against authority, culminating with the final catharsis of release and freedom. The endings speak—in a rather distant way—of aiding man, of having to tear down your walls; eventually, you have to drop your madness and let others in, or ultimately, lose your humanity and wither away alone. TEAR DOWN THE WALL!
