The sound of the song and its mood seem beautiful to me though saddening. Though I already knew this, it was comforting to actually hear it coming from someone else. The emotional confusion and need for escape portrayed in this song seemed to exemplify that I was not alone in feeling this way. At the time I first heard this song, my grand father had passed away, we did not have electricity, or sewer, and we were literally short of money. Similar to the narrator of Mad World, many teenagers feel oppressed, in need of escape. This may have contributed to his need for escape. “I find it hard to tell you / I find it hard to take / when people run in circles.” Though Mad World never completely explains why the narrator is so miserable, by the lyrics we can infer that he is somewhat frustrated with doing the same thing day in and day out. Though there are other people around, his narrative is spoken in a way that makes him seem completely alone. With its brevity, the song conveys that the speaker doesn’t have the energy to explain his misery, or why he feels this way. Though Mad World is essentially a very short song, its brevity adds to feelings of anguish. Sometimes the simplest words can provide all the explanation that is needed. This helps to chronicle the misery the narrator experiences as he searches for himself outside the bounds of the average world. Yet, the narrator does not actually seek others until the end of the song, leaving him isolated in his own misunderstandings. “Went to school and I was very nervous / No one knew me, no one knew me / Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson / Look right through me.” No one understands the sadness that the teenage narrator feels, nor does anyone seem to want to. The lyrics themselves help to exemplify the loneliness and sadness the narrator feels. The songs slow progress and low key add to the depressed mood of the lyrics. The song can also be described as being a solo act only Gary Jules provides vocals, creating loneliness in the song. In this particular song, only a lone piano provides musical assistance. Sometimes the simplest means of communicating are the most significant. Though the message of this song is complex, its musical elements are very simple. As the song continues, the world contracts around the narrator, causing the narrator to search for an outlet from his misery. “Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow / No tomorrow, no tomorrow.” The repetition of certain lines in the song helps to exemplify the narrator’s loss of hope, as he loses faith in the world around him. The sadness around him affects him deeply, infesting him with the same sense of hopelessness, which is reiterated throughout the song.
The song, which reads more like a poem, first describes, through the inner-monologue of the narrator, the sad drudgery felt by the people around him.
The message of Mad World asserts that living in an isolated box of a world is not an existence it is a prison sentence.ĭespair may be contagious and also timeless. A lone piano and slow melody helps to create a brooding and melancholy atmosphere, asserting the sense of despair felt by the songs speaker. As the narrator goes through his average day each of the characters seem to emit feelings of hopelessness and despair.
The song includes a jumble of characters, which shift in and out of the narrator’s point-of-view. Gary Jules’s 2003 international hit, Mad World, criticizes human society through the eyes of a troubled teenager. Poetry has always been used to express resentment over one’s generation and era.
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