[Verbosus]

I take it the Doors song you are referring to in your last sentence is “The End”, which several lines reference Oedipus.
Ever hear of that?
It’s an old story.

[mbarker12474]

Yes.

[autumnraine]

Oh Flanders there can’t grasp that Jim Morrison could be thinking of a classic story reference in a song. I just HAS to be the drugs ir being a hippie. And I was born in 1972 so certainly not a hippie but LOVE the Doors. Even had the privilege of meeting Robby Krieger in 1993 at a local sshow.

[Fiji Hill]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I interpret "The End" as being about a coup d'etat in South Vietnam in 1963--although I may be the only one who has come up with such an interpretation. Here is some of the symbolism in the song:

• Stranger's hand--foreign aid
• desperate land--South Vietnam
• Roman wilderness of pain--government-by-coup-d'etat, ancient Roman style
• children are insane--South Vietnam'm coup-happy military elite
• King's highway--Route 1, the "street without joy"
• Weird things inside the gold mine--the State Dept. or CIA
• summer rain--South Vietnam's summer rainy monsoon
• West--SEATO
• snake--the Soviet bloc
• ancient lake--Communism
• seven miles--The Warsaw Pact's seven members
• he's old...--Nikita Khrushchev or Ho Chi Minh
• blue bus--military vehicle in which Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were held before they were killed
• killer--General Duong Van Minh
• ancient gallery--the CIA or USIA
• hall--the presidential palace
• sister--Tran Le Xuan, Diem's sister and Nhu's wife, and South Vietnam's "first lady"--in Los Angeles at the time of the coup
• father--President Ngo Dinh Diem
• brother--Ngo Dinh Nhu
• mother--Tran Le Xuan or journalist Marguerite Higgins, defender of Diem and author of Our Vietnam Nightmare (New York: Harper, 1965)