For many fans, "Comfortably Numb" is the quintessential Pink Floyd song. The brilliant musical arrangements, haunting guitar solos, ethereal vocals and sweeping lyrics illustrate just why this band is considered one of the best in the history of rock music. Yet not only is the song an important number in the Floyd catalogue but it is also arguably one of the most important songs in the album's second half in terms of both narrative and theme.

As mentioned before, "Comfortably Numb" begins as if in answer to Pink's final question at the end of "Bring the Boys Back Home." The moody bass, gradual drums, and wavering guitars build to the song's first line as if musically representing Pink's drifting consciousness and his hazy realization of being spoken to from both outside of his mental wall and inside his physical one, the hotel room. Curiously, though, the song begins with the questions of what is for now a total stranger, one who inverts Pink's last question by asking if there's "anybody in there?" referring to both the hotel room as well as Pink's comatose state. Quite possibly mirroring Pink's own state of mind, first time listeners are often confused as to just who is speaking. Is this another of Pink's hallucinations? Is this Pink speaking to himself? Is this a real person? It's hard to say if Pink even knows, but thanks to lyrical implications as well as Roger Waters's interviews, it's safe to assume that the new speaker is a doctor who, along with Pink's manager and others, has broken into Pink's hotel room in an attempt to try and revive him for that night's concert. As Waters states, the rest of the song becomes Pink's "confrontation with the doctor," with "confrontation" taking on both senses of its meaning. It is both a meeting between the two as well as a battle as the doctor attempts to reinvigorate the indifferent Pink who just might not be ready to be resuscitated. After all, his journey to reevaluate his "fading roots" is terminated almost abruptly with the intrusion of his manager and doctor having only just begun in "Vera" and "Bring the Boys Back Home."

The verses in the first part of the song do little more than detail the doctor's initial examination of Pink, testing his awareness of himself ("just nod if you can hear me"), his emotional situation ("I hear you're feeling down"), as well as other medical generalities ("can you show me where it hurts"). What is most interesting for me about the doctor's introduction lies in the irony behind his questions rather than what is actually said. As mentioned before, his first question ironically reverses Pink's main question since "Hey You." Asking if there's "anybody in there" could very well be what Pink has wanted to hear all along: there is someone "out there," and they are trying to get behind his wall and help him. Yet in another irony, the "help" the doctor ultimately brings is far from what Pink really needs. The doctor then asks if there's "anyone home," recalling, unbeknownst to him, Pink's earlier fixation on the ideas of home. It's questionable as to whether Pink is "home," that is fully cognizant at this time, or even if he is found "home" in the brief journey back into his mind. As if calling through the haze and muddle of Pink's brain, the doctor's wavering voice finally asks Pink to show him "where it hurts" in one of the verse's most blatant ironies. For Pink, the truth is that it hurts nowhere and everywhere. That is, the pain is not physical, not something that can be pointed out, poked at, and remedied. Rather, the pain is deeply seeded within his mind and quite possibly within his very being.

Perhaps in reply to the doctor's question, Pink tries to show the origin of his suffering as best he can through his mentally entombed and drug-dulled state. As if answering "where it hurts" and "nod if you can hear me," Pink sings in the vaporous chorus that "there is no pain / you are receding." It appears his wall has fulfilled its purpose in blocking out the emotion, the feeling, and the connectivity with life outside of the mind. All is dulled for Pink; all is distant like a ship's "smoke on the horizon," an image that is as enigmatic as it is eloquent. Some might argue that the line is nothing more than a metaphor, an image conveying Pink's feelings of isolation and helplessness, as if he is adrift on the sea with help visible but equally out of reach. Others might argue that it is a childhood memory, that Pink's mind is lapsing between the present and the past as a result of being interrupted from his regression by the manager and doctor. It's even possible that the mental picture symbolically portrays the root of Pink's disorder. Ship imagery was often used by Waters to convey the departure and sacrifice of English soldiers during World War II. Many examples of this can be found in Pink Floyd's followup album, "The Final Cut," in songs such as "Southhampton Dock," which lamentingly pictures the symbolic figure of England's innocence "bravely wav[ing] the boys goodbye again" as they disembark for the war from the harbor. Applying these same ideas to "Comfortably Numb" and Pink's story, it's easy to see how the ship on the horizon could symbolize Pink's father, having gone and died in the war and constantly hovering on the horizon of his son's mind. It is also interesting to note the oceanic implications in this and the next line, both with the ship and when the doctor's voice is "only coming through in waves." Keeping in mind that water is often a maternal symbol, the mother's overprotection of Pink is also implied in the image. It was also mentioned before that water is often a symbol of the mind as well, reflecting the multiple layers and unfound depths of the human psyche. By both readings, the water (Pink's mother / mind) intensify the root icon of the ship constantly on the horizon, ultimately producing the overwhelming sense of distance and isolation. It is the story of Pink's psychosis in a single line.

From here Pink regresses back into his mind and, more specifically, the childhood memory of being sick, as previously mentioned in the analyses of "Mother" and "Nobody Home." Many fans are puzzled by this sudden mentioning of some childhood illness which, until now, has remained unmentioned throughout the album, barring the movie version of "Mother" and the implications of the "swollen hand blues" in "Nobody Home." Though I wish I could provide more specifics about this illness, there is little information to go by in the song itself. But perhaps that is what makes Pink's story so universal, so applicable to everyone in this world. Nearly all of us have been sick, and many to the point of the disorientation Pink felt as a child. Listing specifics ("I, Pink, contracted a serious case of the flu when I was 13 years old, which lasted 4 weeks and…etc.") would not only detract from the ethereal quality of the song but also from the universality of Pink's story. When it comes down to it, we know all that we need to know. Pink was sick as a child and the only reason he recalls that memory now is because at the present moment, he is feeling similar effects to that illness many years past. While that which is causing his "hands [to feel] just like two balloons" (most likely drugs) differs from the cause of his adolescent ailment, the feelings of disorientation are the same. By one argument, this parallel between the past and present shows what little has changed. Sure, the innocence of Young Pink has been left in the dust of experience, but the raw emotion and the impression of being lost, isolated, and without an anchor are relatively the same. It's like the meeting between old and young Pink in the movie sequence for "Is There Anybody Out There?" except this time Pink realizes that relatively nothing has changed aside from the completion of his wall. In a way the wall becomes Pink's present illness. It is that which causes him to feel disoriented, to feel incapable of any connection, even linguistic, and which prompts him to simply state that he "can't explain [and] you would not understand."

In light of this parallel between old and young Pink as well as the rest of the album, his next cry that "this is not how I am" is generally read by some as ironic ignorance. The fact is that this IS how Pink is. He has been this way since he was a child and with the construction and completion of his wall, this is how he has remained. From what we've heard, Pink has nearly always been distant, uncommunicative, and disordered (at least from early adulthood).. While he might view his recent pitfalls as new developments in his life, the audience has the ability to see the story as a whole and thus conclude that these recent occurances are merely the recycled experiences of his past. Pink has been in this state before (as evidenced in the young / old parallel) and will continue to remain here until he destroys his wall and progresses into life without being "comfortably numb," that is without dulling the pain and past trauma by whatever means necessary.

Others, such as Floyd fans Ryan (AllB923) and Scott Gray interpret Pink' insistence that "this is not how I am" shows fleeting glimpses of sanity. Even though Pink has been numbed by both his wall and drugs and is slipping further and further into a demented state, there is still a part of him that recognizes the damage his self-isolation has done, a part of him that's calling out for help, saying "I know what it looks like from the outside world, but the real me is still here beneath this drug addict, rock star disguise." As Scott Gray writes, "The problem Pink had is that while many can and will wear a game face (a wall, so to speak), most of these people are also capable of dropping it and allowing others to know who is inside. Pink's wall, however, was so complete that there was absolutely no way for anybody to really get to know him, or for him to reach out to others...Pink recognized there was a problem. Unfortunately, he was too close to it to put his finger on it in any other way than simply saying 'this is not how I am'." A part of Pink knows that he is doing wrong, knows that he is harming others and doesn't want to be alone behind his wall. Yet by this time the "real" Pink (the one who still knows right from wrong) has also been buried by the bricks of life and is slowly being drowned out by all the things he originally used to try to find himself (all of his possessions, addictions, etc.). As fan Ryan comments, Pink is both "sane and numb from his wall at the same time."

And so an interesting dichotomy is highligted, one in which Pink is torn between self-realization and self-destruction, much like the beginning of the first "In the Flesh?" where his invitation to the audience to "find out what's behind these cold eyes" and to "claw through this disguise" can be read simultaneously as both a taunt from the facist persona, or a true call for help from the genuine, real Pink, asking for someone to help him find out who he really is. In short, despite the growing dominance of the dictator persona, Pink is still very much fighting an internal war: the corrupted wall-self he has turned out to be versus the potential open-self that he knows he can be.

After a brilliant guitar solo, the doctor is back in the second verse with a shot that will hopefully (at least for the manager and crew) revive Pink from his drug and wall induced trance. A Floyd fan simply known to me as Rob sent his suggestion on what the "pin prick" actually is. "In Comfortably Numb, when the doctor gives Pink an injection, it may not be to take away the pain. If you remember, he screams after the injection. It might be Narcan, which is an opiate antagonist often given to heroin abusers when they enter emergency rooms. It kills their high immediately. However, if they're suffering from paranoid delusions (the wall, the dictator) it would not help those." As mentioned earlier, though, the shot itself is not given to help Pink along psychologically. Rather than being the assistance he seeks, the shot is really a reflection of one of Pink's bricks. It is yet another string which controls him, keeping him "going through the show" (the concert) so that the managers and all involved continue to make a profit off of him. As Roger Waters says in his 1979 interview, "they're not interested in any of these problems, all they're interested in is how many people there are and tickets have been sold and the show must go on, at any cost, to anybody." Once again, Pink finds out that there are people "out there," yet those who find him at this time severely reinforce his wall rather than help deconstruct it.

Since the very beginning of the album, the "show" has been a metaphor for life itself. Keeping this original reading in mind, it is arguable whether the doctor's shot aids Pink's "going through the show" or hinders it. From one perspective, the shot does resuscitate him from his drug-induced stupor, which in a sense reconnects him with the physical world. Yet from another and equally valid perspective, the shot can also be said to interrupt the regression started in "Vera," thereby obstructing his metaphysical journey to reconnect with his roots and find a way out of his wall. Furthermore, one can also argue that the doctor's shot acts as a catalyst for the future emanation of Dictator Pink, in a way freeing the crazed self that has been locked away for so long in his subconscious. Or could it be, by that first reading, that the rise of Dictator Pink is imminent and that the shot not only quickened the fascist self's fruition but also the subsequent epiphany that destroys Pink's wall? Just as these varying viewpoints are debatable, the ensuing questions are likewise unanswerable.

Pink enters the song once again with the second chorus, this time recounting that as a child he "caught a fleeting glimpse / out of the corner of my eye." While I wish I was able to provide some lyrical certainty, especially after the problematic questions just posed, I am unfortunately unable to fully define what this "fleeting glimpse" is. Such is the joy of literary interpretation, though. That "fleeting glimpse" is any number of things for each and every one of us. One could reason that as a child Pink saw the world as it really was, warts and all, as the saying goes. Much like the caustic warnings from "the Thin Ice," Pink realizes that life is an often long, arduous trip whose dividends are usually not equivalent to what is invested. Life and the people in it are full of masks, full of walls, deceit, double-speak, pain, and suffering.

Or perhaps he saw a glimpse of what he would become, once more paralleling the relative stasis between young and old Pink. This quick glance could very well be the meeting of selves as visualized at the end of "Is There Anybody Out There?" in which young Pink confronts and flees his older self, scared by the dementia he finds behind the deranged older eyes.

From a wholly different perspective, Bill Romanelli writes: "My theory is that it's a fleeting glimpse of a life, and a world, without walls. Everyone on the planet at one time or another wishes they could go back to the innocence of their childhood, that they could see the world through the eyes of a child. All of us, when we're children, have this fleeting glimpse. I think it's 'fleeting' because this 'innocence' of childhood probably only lasts until we're three of four years old, and few of us are even fully self-aware before we're two years old. That means for two years of our life (practically an instant in a 40 year life) we exist in a state where we feel safe, cared for, and untroubled. We're completely undistracted by material concerns, egos, and so on. And we trust everybody, implicitly. And then it's gone. The child has grown, the dream (of a world without walls) is gone."

Or could that glimpse be something as simple and universal as hope and love, things that are sorely lacking from Pink's life as both a child and an adult. Pink is loved as a child by his mother, yet this overprotective love is so selfishly centered on the mother's own feelings of loss that it becomes distorted into something more akin to suffering. Similar to Bill Romanelli's point, it's possible that Pink simply hopes, even if it's for a brief time. Perhaps he hopes to be great ("mother, should I run for president?") or for a life without his wall or even something as seemingly simple as being accepted. However, whatever hope he has departs in the shadow of the wall that will consume life for the rest of his youth and into his adulthood. Subsequently, Pink's "fleeting glimpse" disappears like the innocence of a grown child, the departed "dream" replaced by the unsettling reality of a life full of walls, masks, spoiled fantasies, and failed hopes. It is a life where, at least for Pink, one either acts or is acted upon with grievous consequences.

Just as Gilmour's guitar solos have often mirrored a change within Pink, the final frantic lead guitar reflects Pink's latest dramatic metamorphosis. It is the raging change from one who has formerly been acted upon (at least in his own mind) to one who is finally about to act.

True to the ethereal quality of the song, the movie sequence for "Comfortably Numb" is one of the most rich and symbolically complex pieces in the film. Though the episode starts ordinarily enough by faithfully depicting the first verse in which Pink's manager and medics break into the room to find Pink in a drug-induced stupor, the sequence soon becomes a bit more dense with the induction of the first chorus. As Pink sings of his childhood memories, the screen is filled with the familiar shot of Pink running across the rugby field and stopping in front of the camera. Just as "Goodbye Cruel World" expanded this same shot from "When the Tigers Broke Free, Part 1," "Comfortably Numb" continues the sequence past its predecessors, showing Pink from another angle as he circles a spot on the ground, and then bends to pick up a wounded rat from the grass. Pink takes the rat home, shows it to his mother, and is shooed from the house by the startled woman who backs away from the rodent. He then takes it to a little shack beside a canal and places it in a makeshift bed of straw, wrapping his sweater vest around the injured creature. Before the second verse begins, there is a quick shot of Pink's mother superimposed over the sky of Pink's alienated wasteland (that barren landscape first depicted in "Nobody Home.") What is most interesting about this shot for me is the way the Mother is portrayed with such garish, exaggerated makeup and hair. She is a larger-than-life, almost godlike figure spanning the limitless sky. If nothing else, she is part of the reason for the wasteland lying below her. Nor is she the only reason. As subsequent shots show, the doctor, Pink's father, and numerous others bar the sky, symbolizing not only Pink's isoaltion from life but also from the limitless hopes and dreams (the sky) of his former childhood innocence.

Soon after we find young Pink being examined by a doctor, the same shot that was used in the sequence for "Mother" depicting the childhood illness alluded to in the chorus of "Comfortably Numb." It's quite possible that Pink has picked up some kind of illness from the rat, one which he remembers years later as he begins to awaken after being injected by the doctor in his hotel room. Interestingly, older Pink screams well after the needle pierces his arm, causing one to wonder if he's yelling more in response to his childhood memories rather than his present pain.

At the second chorus, young Pink once again runs to the shack only to find that the rat is dead. After a shot of Pink dropping the animal's body into the canal, a line of people cross the wasteland in front of the camera. First Pink's father holding the dead rat by the tail with Pink's wife (theatrically made up like the Mother) in the background. Next the schoolteacher whose eyebrows are made into a continuous furrow followed by one anonymous soldier after another. They are the sources for the bricks in Pink's wall, each one spawning an emotion that ultimately lead to the creation of Pink's alienated mental landscape that they walk through. As they pass they look at the camera, at Pink, with love, or accusations, or sympathy. In Pink's mind they are gaudy (like the depiction of the Mother and wife), obtrusive, and most of all, never ending.

But what about that rat? Since I posted my original analysis back in 1997, a large number of people have written me about the symbolism of Pink's pet rodent. Whether asking me to expound further or telling me their own opinions, the rat seems to have affected the audience in much the same way it affects the young Pink. Roger Waters states on the DVD commentary that like Pink, he found a rat on a rugby field that died a few days after he took it home and cared for it in his garage. Yet there seems to be some deeper level to this memory that goes beyond the simple depiction of an incident from the author's childhood. On some deeper level, many feel that the animal is a symbol of Pink's father, dying out of Pink's life just as soon as it entered into it. Vardaman from William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying associates the death of his mother with that of a fish he caught earlier in the day. For the young child, the death of one creature is just like the death of another. "My mother is a fish," Vardaman comments, externalizing and coalescing his youthful and shallow thoughts on death. And so the rat could very well serve this same purpose for the young Pink, acting as a carrier of sorts for the chaotic feelings of loss caused by the loss of his father. Others feel that the rat is a reflection of Pink, its sickness and helplessness mirroring Pink's own childhood illness and dependence. Still others might choose to explicate the scene from a psychoanalytic perspective. If one interprets the rat as Pink's hopes and dreams (a sort of symbol of Pink himself), then the mother's rejection of the rat is metaphorical of her rejection of Pink's individuality and emotions. Pink then tries to foster these hopes alone, yet he eventually suppresses these feelings within his mind when he tosses the rat into the canal (once again interpreting water as the subconscious mind). Young Pink's act of oppressing to the shadowy and uncharted depths of the mind those feelings that one cannot deal with is a perfect example of the classic psychoanalytic defense mechanism of repression, much like the wall itself.

But why does Pink continue to return to this memory? The emotions caused by the rat's death are just one out of innumerable things that Pink has repressed throughout his lifetime. Why is it that Pink returns to this instance of finding the rat time and again? It is the first shot of young Pink at the beginning of the movie in "When the Tigers Broke Free, Part 1." It is also the first thing Pink thinks about immediately after completing his wall. And now, as he sits in his hotel room, mentally fading between the past and present, it is once again the predominant memory of his childhood. So out of all of the pains and repressed feelings of his life, why does Pink vividly recall, almost habitually, this singular incident? I believe it's because this is one of the only times in his life in which he truly connects with another living being. Though he grieves at the loss of his father, Pink never truly connected with him because he never really knew him. And though he loves his mother he cannot connect with her because she is so overprotective and demanding. Both relationships are marked by Pink being taken from (emotionally, individually, etc.) rather giving. Yet out of his childhood innocence, Pink gives himself to this injured and helpless animal, sacrificing his time and even the clothes off his back for the welfare of a creature that most, like his mother, automatically shun. Perhaps he sees a bit of himself in the rodent, his own metaphorically injured and alienated state. Or perhaps he projects his hopes in life onto the creature, wanting to believe that life is more than the flimsy disguises sung about in "the Thin Ice." Whatever the rat is to Pink, the connection he makes with it is deeply rooted, enough so that it is one of the most dominant memories in his mind years later.

Yet what about the nature of this memory, of this remembered connection? One might argue that the recollection is actually Pink's slow realization that the wall is more injurious than advantageous. He built his giant defense mechanism out of the belief that no true connections could be made between two living things. However, in stark contrast to this idea lies the image of young Pink giving himself so freely to the rat. If a true, personal connection is possible, then the wall was built in vain. But from the opposing side, this memory could very well be a negative realization, a moment that reinforces Pink's previous belief that all relationships end in ruin. Pink's care ultimately ends with his mother rejecting the animal and the rat's death. Put simply, all paths lead to pain, loss, and death, thereby justifying the completion of Pink's wall. Such an idea is reinforced when Pink's dad walks through the wasteland carrying the dead rat, almost as a reminder in Pink's mind that all things in life lead to pain.

Almost in response to the painful memories of loss and death and the hallucinatory procession of the characters in Pink's past (his living bricks) across his mental wasteland, Pink retreats further behind his wall and further into decay. As the crew members carry him down the hall, the flesh on Pink's arm begins to form a sort of chrysalis, a fleshy cocoon that soon spreads to his chest and face before finally encapsulating his entire body. (It should be quickly noted that many feel this sequence is a direct reference to original Floyd frontman Syd Barrett, who used to mix quaaludes with a tube of hair cream and rub it all into his hair before a concert. As the hot lights bore down on the stage, the drugs would slowly seep into Barrett's skin and the cream would melt over his head making him look like "a guttered candle" as Roger Waters reflected.) The lights of the hallway distort as the crew drags the pulpy mass that was Pink down the stairs and into the awaiting limousine. In the back seat of the car, Pink tears at the flesh of his melting face, an image reminiscent of the faceless masks worn by the children in "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2." For the most part, Pink has been formed by the events of his life and the people who have populated it. He has taken on the identity of all those who molded him. The loss of his father, the watchful, paranoid eye of his mother, the stricture of his teacher, the infidelity of his wife, the ignorant ardor of his fans; all have shaped Pink into the faceless, identity-less mass sitting in the back seat of the limousine driving him to his concert. That is until now. Pink first breaks through the flesh-like cocoon on his arm, revealing a black-sleeve underneath adorned with a patch, a symbol of two crossed hammers. He finally breaks free from the mask that was his identity-less face and emerges from his shell in a full black Nazi-like uniform. The conflicting sides of Pink, the rebel and the orderer, that began to coalesce in "Is There Anybody Out There" have finally united and been born into the figure that sits calmly and expressionless in the car's back seat. All the pain, all the hatred, all the feelings of loss, all the disillusionment; every negative emotion that has been repressed within the murky canal of Pink's mind erupts to the surface of long mental suppression and finds an outlet in this newly awakened incarnation.

In terms of the movie song order, the reign of Fascist Pink is at hand.