I Have A Cigar Analysis

During the late 18th century a movement started up known as Romanticism. This movement “emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional”(Britannia). Romanticism was a major contrast from the Neoclassical era before it. Romanticism also led the way to future counterculture movements we see throughout history as the rejection of the normal first started by the Romantics. We see Romanticism at work in poetry such as William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, in art such as Caspar David Friedrich 's Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, and in modern day equivalents such as Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.
Romanticism is quite noticeable in many writings during the late …show more content…
The song Have a Cigar is a “critique of hypocrisy and greed”(Have A Cigar). One of the main parts of Romanticism was going against the rich. In this song it shows how the rich only use you for their own gain. Another aspect of Romanticism was a love a nature and the unknown. The title track discusses nature and the unknown together “So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain”(Wish You Were Here, Lyrics). The songs discusses also how mankind can be enslaved and not follow their true destiny or what they would want to do out of their own free will: “Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”(Wish You Were Here, Lyrics). One of the main beliefs of the Romantics is that we are born uncorrupted only to be corrupted by society; the song Shine On You Crazy Diamond talks directly about this. The song says, “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun”(Shine On You Crazy Diamond). It later goes on to says how society defiles the young “Now there 's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky”(Shine On You Crazy Diamond). The albums as a whole hits on many notes of Romanticism showing that Romanticism is still relevant even in a new