PINK FLOYD'S ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

In the very time that I heard about the central topic of 1984 in class, a specific video came to my mind: Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall which has always caught my attention in the sense that it shows how controlled we are as society since a long time ago. For me, the similarity between the story and the song is quite obvious since the message is the same: oppression.

There is little doubt about 1984's central topic: totalitarianism and oppression. 1984 shows a dystopian or negative utopian world in which people's life is controlled by an omniscient figure, in this case the Party or the Big Brother. This Party wants to control not only every part of the society of that time in the sense that they decide what you can and cannot do but also they constantly fill in people's mind with the party´s thought. Its main character is called Winston Smith who lives in this controlled society, where individuality and freedom do not exist at all.

Almost 40 years later, this negative thinking about society had not changed that much. The song " Another Brick In The Wall" is part of the Pink Floyd's album called "The Wall" in which different “Pink's stories” are told. In “Another Brick In The Wall” Pink wants to write poetry but that is something impossible for that time so he is ridiculed by his teacher. The teacher represents the society and the education of that time which was turning children into mindless drones. This idea is shown very literally in Pink Floyd's video in which children walk and pass through a brick wall and when they come out, they are not individuals anymore but a crowd of equal children or just more bricks in the wall.

Every single creation represents something, a good or bad experience within the authors' lives no matter if it is a story or a song. 
In the former case, it is of great importance knowing that George Orwell was educated in boarding schools in which he never fitted in. Actually, he felt oppressed by the control that the schools exercised over him and the other students’ lives.However, he decided to work for the British Imperial Policeman where he was also controlled. In the second case, the song's protagonist, Pink, represents the vocalist Roger Waters' alter-ego since Waters, part of a Britain hit by the Second World War, was educated under a "thought control" and "sarcastic" education system as the song says and where teachers are those who represent oppression.

The relation between the story and the song is the message and the relation between Orwell and Waters is that both were oppressive educated. This early oppression had a great impact on their lives, of course on their creations and on society. If we think about it, everything is connected since education is the basis of society and people’s development and the other way around as well.


Even though there are more than one interpretation of “Another Brick In The Wall”, in my opinion there is just one: 

                                         We don't need no education.
                                         We don't need no thought control.
                                         No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
                                         Teacher leave them kids alone

We do not need an oppressed education which controls what to think, what to do and where someone who wants to write poetry such as Pink in the song or Winston in 1984 be punished. We do need education, but an education that teaches us to think as individuals instead of a crowd!

Sources
- -http://www.thewallanalysis.com/main/another-brick1.html

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqPwffptR-E