Saturday, June 21, 2014

The Association's "Requiem for the Masses"

I was thinking about the Association's "Requiem for the Masses" this morning, specifically the lines:
Red was the color of his blood flowing thin
Pallid white was the color of his lifeless skin
Blue was the color of the morning sky
He saw looking up from the ground where he died
It was the last thing ever seen by him
And I realized how appropriate the passive voice in the last line is - "it was seen by him" rather than "he saw it."  It's an interesting use of passive voice because it illustrates that the "he" referenced is no longer capable of action.  Because he's dead, he can no longer be active and the verb has to change voices accordingly.