Lyrics

Brent is always relating his feelings with lyrics of popular songs from the Beatles or Michael Jackson. The music always seems to come up when he's feeling something that he is not sure how to express.

When Brent sees "the other burned kid, Harry" he is very disturbed: "Jesus, what a freak. It makes me feel sick to look at him" (165). Suddenly, words from Michael Jackson's song Man in the Mirror pop into Brent's head.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror/I'm asking him to change his ways.

Brent wonders to himself why that song was in his head when he doesn't even like Michael Jackson, but to the reader the juxtaposition of those particular lyrics next to the description of the other burned boy is very clear. Brent attributes it to the fact that he had seen a commercial where Michael Jackson was on fire. To the reader it is clear that, as Brent looks at Harry, he is literally looking in a mirror. He is disgusted by the image because he does not realize how similar it is to his own.

The Beatles are also quite relevant during Brent's experience. He listens to their tape in the car and he sings their lyrics to himself when he's in a stressful situation. In the car the lyrics he notices are about memories and change:

There are places I remember/All my life, though some have changed/Some forever, not for better/Som have gone, and some remain.

In this scene Brent is not paying much attention to his father in the car with him but rather zoning out and listening to the music. This song and the lyrics strangely fit perfectly to Brent's situation, making me suspicious that the author really had no idea which song was playing in the car at that time and just looked up lyrics to Beatles' songs that would fit nicely with his story.

Brent stands in his closet, crying, with his head in the shirts. "[He] can't stop crying. [He] can't stop," the doctors had been in his room with his parents bringing up his past suicides and the things they had found in his bedroom at home (192). He is extremely stressed in this scene and he isn't able to come up with his own words to express his feelings, so he borrows the Beatles':

Help, I need somebody,/Help, not just anybody,/Help, you know I need someone, help.

These lyrics in particular perfectly match the way Brent was probably feeling in that situation and how he really needed someone to understand him and ask him the right questions.

We know that before the "accident" Brent really enjoyed hard, loud rock. However, when his family gives him an Aerosmith CD for Christmas he admits that "it's too noisy. [He] likes the Beatles better" (302). It makes a lot of sense that after such a shocking experience he would prefer more relaxed music to very loud and exciting music. I think he's had enough excitement for a while, and it's interesting to see this musical transition through the story.