Rhetorical Analysis -- Song: "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab for Cutie (Gibbard/Harmer)

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself
'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said:
That "love is watching someone die."

So who's gonna watch you die?

For this analysis, the music itself will be the main thing I discuss, though the music video will add another level to the analysis.

The obvious analysis (Emma + Ben, and Dianna 2005) of Death Cab for Cutie's song "What Sarah Said" -- the one also supported by an interview published in Under the Radar magazine -- is that love, at the end of mortality, means that you're there for the person you love when they die. To this aim, the music does well, illustrating the wait of a loved one in poetic detail quite sufficient to the task. A good portion of the audience (Indy music lovers - mostly from the American middle class) has been in a hospital before, and so the pathological description of those in the waiting room is something quite familiar and personal. The feelings described are quite accurate, and all details of the poet's surroundings are very relevant to the emotions Gibbard is trying to portray.

Interestingly, the whole song is really just an introduction for the last two lines, "...'love is watching someone die.'/So who's gonna watch you die?" Gibbard has set forward an explanation of the final statement of the song so there is no convincing left to do by the time he asserts it, and poses his question.

Secondly is the layer added by the music video, a story of two young adults dealing with life through self-destructive paths. As I see it, DCFC is also attempting to discuss the application of this new definition of love to other definitions of death. Love, we find often, is seeing someone near us suffering for whom we can do nothing but watch, and this seems to give even more real and even more immediate power to the words of the song.

Author's word count: 279