Simpson
02-05-2003, 12:29 PM
This is a paper I wrote for my Writing course last semester about this song. It's kinda long, but it explains what I think the song is about well:
The ideas in the song “The Grudge” by the band Tool revolve around the mythical character of Saturn, the one-time ruler of the universe. According to Greek myth, Saturn, also known as Cronos, overthrows his father, Uranus, in order to become the ultimate ruler of the Universe. This betrayal demonstrates an ultimate form of greed and hunger for power, one that overshadows the bond of family and loyalty. Because of his own actions, Saturn does not trust his own children. As a result of this paranoia, he devours his children immediately after birth to eradicate the possibility of one of them stealing his crown. Zeus, one of his children, finally escapes this fate and ultimately overthrows his father, becoming the new ruler of the Universe.
In the song, Saturn symbolizes the desire for power, or greed. The first two verses essentially set forth the idea of the grudge, a requirement for a dictatorial rule. The grudge represents the set of ideas of the ruler, and the ruler must hold onto these ideas until the end or he will contradict and invalidate himself. The ruler traps himself in his own ideas, so that he must stand by them or he cannot escape. The idea of Saturn becomes the willpower to hold onto this grudge and the refusal to let it go under any circumstance. Maynard, the lyricist for Tool, first mentions Saturn in the song in a short section after the first two verses: “Saturn ascends, choose one or ten/Hang on or be, humbled again”. The idea of Saturn enters into the life of a person, and gives them the choice between one and ten, one being a regular life, and ten being the possibility for great power. By choosing one, the chooser changes nothing, but by choosing ten, the chooser will eventually be humbled by some greater force tempted by the same need for power, as inevitably happens to all ruling forces. The one who chooses ten will never give in because of the desire for power, so he cannot avoid the humbling process at some point. Maynard builds upon these ideas by comparing the idea of Saturn with the requirements for ruling in the next stanza:
Clutch it like a cornerstone, otherwise it all comes
down
Justify denials and grip them to the lonesome end
Saturn ascends, comes round again
Saturn ascends, the one the ten, ignorant to the
damage done.
The first two lines echo the first two lines from the second verse: the ideas of a ruler hold his domain together, as a cornerstone holds a wall together. Without these, each will fall apart. The ruler must justify and hold onto his rules in order to avoid the contradiction and disaster of change in his opinion. Saturn uses these ideas after ascending to the throne and defeating his father, and he comes around again because the idea of Saturn recurs throughout history in rulers: people want power, and people fight for power. Saturn, ignorant to the knowledge of what could have been if he had not defeated his father and devoured his children, sacrifices the idea of family and all hope for future children and the continuation of his bloodline until Zeus escapes.
The grudge and great power do come with certain side-effects. Maynard repeats a shortened version of the first verse, which focuses upon the characteristics of a ruler:
Wear the grudge like a crown
Desperate to control
Unable to forgive
And we’re sinking deeper
The ruler must wear his desire for power on the outside, like a crown, and this drive for control must be strong enough to establish him as a ruler. In the first verse, the ruler cannot forgive his “scarlet lettermen”, a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, in which a council forces people to wear symbols of their sins over their clothes, a physical representation of their shortcomings. In the song, the scarlet lettermen represent the people that the ruler holds a grudge against and refuses to forgive, possibly even forcing the person to maintain a physical representation of their sins. In the final line, Maynard references the price of power: addiction. With power comes the desire for more power, as it does with Saturn. Throughout this whole verse, the drums intensify as the addiction to power grows.
This verse builds into a segment in which Maynard sings single words instead of lines, and the drums even out. Each line has a depth of meanings, in regard to the governed people, the ruler, and the grudge itself: “Defining/ Confining/ Sinking deeper/ Controlling/ Defining/ And we’re sinking deeper” (23-28). The grudge defines the ruler’s actions, confines the ruler to a set array of actions and, in doing this, controls the ruler. As time goes on, the grudge sinks deeper into the ruler’s mind until he cannot control it. At the same time, the ruler defines the rules, confines the people by the rules, and controls these people. The ruler sinks deeper into the addiction of power as time goes on, until the humbling experience at the end becomes the only mode of escape. The concept of the grudge sinking deeper repeats because it becomes ingrained in the minds of a society, and the longer that a ruler reigns, the harder it becomes to humble him.
The next two verses tie the idea of the song together. The words themselves relate back to the choice a person has in whether or not to become a ruler:
Saturn comes back around to show you everything
Lets you choose what you will not see and then
Drags you down like a stone or lifts you up again
Spits you out like a child, light and innocent.
Saturn returns in myth form and shows each person the attributes to gaining power, the rise and fall, and the negative requirements for keeping power. The receiver of this knowledge decides whether or not to pay attention to the negative attributes, which can easily be ignored if the thirst for power drives this person enough. If the person does not see these negative attributes, the hunger for power will destroy them, but the person who does see these negatives and denies them will be raised to a higher state of self-satisfaction and awareness. This person will be spit out like an innocent child, transformed into a state if awareness in which both the pains of worldly awareness and the joys of childhood become one. This stanza then repeats in a shorter form, with the following added onto the end, relating to Saturn consuming the ruler: “Consume you till you/Choose to let this go”. At this point the song mellows and goes into an instrumental segment. This signifies the choice: a person can either choose to let the grudge go, or can choose to have Saturn consume them. Ironically, Saturn consumes his children in the myth, and symbolically the hunger for power feeds upon the innocent, the people who never had a need for power before. The greed consumes the innocent as the greed in Saturn’s bloodline consumes his own children.
The song calls for people to ignore this lust for power and reach a higher state. Maynard states this idea in the final lines of the song:
Give away the stone
Let the oceans take and transmutate
This cold and fated anchor
Give away the stone
Let the waters kiss and transmutate
These leaden grudges into gold.
The anchor represents the grudge, and Maynard describes it as cold and fated, because the hunger for power consumes the warmth of human emotion and it ultimately leads to a fate of destruction. He wants the oceans, which change rocks and shipwrecks by flowing around them, to change the stone of temptation into something beautiful. He wants the experience of swimming in the waters of temptation to transform the desire for power into a rich substance, such as gold. These can all occur if a person does not choose to follow the path of power but follows a path towards self-satisfaction instead. A final and emotional scream leads into the final, repeated message of the song: “Let go” (46). Maynard calls the world to abandon the desire for power and to simply live. In a world in which many people base their survival upon power and material success, this message has a huge depth in meaning. The search for life and internal fulfillment brings greater rewards than the search for external satisfaction.
The ideas in the song “The Grudge” by the band Tool revolve around the mythical character of Saturn, the one-time ruler of the universe. According to Greek myth, Saturn, also known as Cronos, overthrows his father, Uranus, in order to become the ultimate ruler of the Universe. This betrayal demonstrates an ultimate form of greed and hunger for power, one that overshadows the bond of family and loyalty. Because of his own actions, Saturn does not trust his own children. As a result of this paranoia, he devours his children immediately after birth to eradicate the possibility of one of them stealing his crown. Zeus, one of his children, finally escapes this fate and ultimately overthrows his father, becoming the new ruler of the Universe.
In the song, Saturn symbolizes the desire for power, or greed. The first two verses essentially set forth the idea of the grudge, a requirement for a dictatorial rule. The grudge represents the set of ideas of the ruler, and the ruler must hold onto these ideas until the end or he will contradict and invalidate himself. The ruler traps himself in his own ideas, so that he must stand by them or he cannot escape. The idea of Saturn becomes the willpower to hold onto this grudge and the refusal to let it go under any circumstance. Maynard, the lyricist for Tool, first mentions Saturn in the song in a short section after the first two verses: “Saturn ascends, choose one or ten/Hang on or be, humbled again”. The idea of Saturn enters into the life of a person, and gives them the choice between one and ten, one being a regular life, and ten being the possibility for great power. By choosing one, the chooser changes nothing, but by choosing ten, the chooser will eventually be humbled by some greater force tempted by the same need for power, as inevitably happens to all ruling forces. The one who chooses ten will never give in because of the desire for power, so he cannot avoid the humbling process at some point. Maynard builds upon these ideas by comparing the idea of Saturn with the requirements for ruling in the next stanza:
Clutch it like a cornerstone, otherwise it all comes
down
Justify denials and grip them to the lonesome end
Saturn ascends, comes round again
Saturn ascends, the one the ten, ignorant to the
damage done.
The first two lines echo the first two lines from the second verse: the ideas of a ruler hold his domain together, as a cornerstone holds a wall together. Without these, each will fall apart. The ruler must justify and hold onto his rules in order to avoid the contradiction and disaster of change in his opinion. Saturn uses these ideas after ascending to the throne and defeating his father, and he comes around again because the idea of Saturn recurs throughout history in rulers: people want power, and people fight for power. Saturn, ignorant to the knowledge of what could have been if he had not defeated his father and devoured his children, sacrifices the idea of family and all hope for future children and the continuation of his bloodline until Zeus escapes.
The grudge and great power do come with certain side-effects. Maynard repeats a shortened version of the first verse, which focuses upon the characteristics of a ruler:
Wear the grudge like a crown
Desperate to control
Unable to forgive
And we’re sinking deeper
The ruler must wear his desire for power on the outside, like a crown, and this drive for control must be strong enough to establish him as a ruler. In the first verse, the ruler cannot forgive his “scarlet lettermen”, a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, in which a council forces people to wear symbols of their sins over their clothes, a physical representation of their shortcomings. In the song, the scarlet lettermen represent the people that the ruler holds a grudge against and refuses to forgive, possibly even forcing the person to maintain a physical representation of their sins. In the final line, Maynard references the price of power: addiction. With power comes the desire for more power, as it does with Saturn. Throughout this whole verse, the drums intensify as the addiction to power grows.
This verse builds into a segment in which Maynard sings single words instead of lines, and the drums even out. Each line has a depth of meanings, in regard to the governed people, the ruler, and the grudge itself: “Defining/ Confining/ Sinking deeper/ Controlling/ Defining/ And we’re sinking deeper” (23-28). The grudge defines the ruler’s actions, confines the ruler to a set array of actions and, in doing this, controls the ruler. As time goes on, the grudge sinks deeper into the ruler’s mind until he cannot control it. At the same time, the ruler defines the rules, confines the people by the rules, and controls these people. The ruler sinks deeper into the addiction of power as time goes on, until the humbling experience at the end becomes the only mode of escape. The concept of the grudge sinking deeper repeats because it becomes ingrained in the minds of a society, and the longer that a ruler reigns, the harder it becomes to humble him.
The next two verses tie the idea of the song together. The words themselves relate back to the choice a person has in whether or not to become a ruler:
Saturn comes back around to show you everything
Lets you choose what you will not see and then
Drags you down like a stone or lifts you up again
Spits you out like a child, light and innocent.
Saturn returns in myth form and shows each person the attributes to gaining power, the rise and fall, and the negative requirements for keeping power. The receiver of this knowledge decides whether or not to pay attention to the negative attributes, which can easily be ignored if the thirst for power drives this person enough. If the person does not see these negative attributes, the hunger for power will destroy them, but the person who does see these negatives and denies them will be raised to a higher state of self-satisfaction and awareness. This person will be spit out like an innocent child, transformed into a state if awareness in which both the pains of worldly awareness and the joys of childhood become one. This stanza then repeats in a shorter form, with the following added onto the end, relating to Saturn consuming the ruler: “Consume you till you/Choose to let this go”. At this point the song mellows and goes into an instrumental segment. This signifies the choice: a person can either choose to let the grudge go, or can choose to have Saturn consume them. Ironically, Saturn consumes his children in the myth, and symbolically the hunger for power feeds upon the innocent, the people who never had a need for power before. The greed consumes the innocent as the greed in Saturn’s bloodline consumes his own children.
The song calls for people to ignore this lust for power and reach a higher state. Maynard states this idea in the final lines of the song:
Give away the stone
Let the oceans take and transmutate
This cold and fated anchor
Give away the stone
Let the waters kiss and transmutate
These leaden grudges into gold.
The anchor represents the grudge, and Maynard describes it as cold and fated, because the hunger for power consumes the warmth of human emotion and it ultimately leads to a fate of destruction. He wants the oceans, which change rocks and shipwrecks by flowing around them, to change the stone of temptation into something beautiful. He wants the experience of swimming in the waters of temptation to transform the desire for power into a rich substance, such as gold. These can all occur if a person does not choose to follow the path of power but follows a path towards self-satisfaction instead. A final and emotional scream leads into the final, repeated message of the song: “Let go” (46). Maynard calls the world to abandon the desire for power and to simply live. In a world in which many people base their survival upon power and material success, this message has a huge depth in meaning. The search for life and internal fulfillment brings greater rewards than the search for external satisfaction.