Work to Discuss: "Two Suns in the Sunset" From the album The Final Cut: A Requiem for the Post War Dream. By Roger Waters, Performed by Pink Floyd, 1983.

State of future: Apocalyptic--if warning is not heeded

Alternative--perhaps the realization of the post war dream

Dimension of future: Present and Near Future

Related course objectives:

Objective 2: Is the future "written" or "being written"?

Objective 7: To remark alternative visions for human identities such as race, class, gender, nationalism, nature, religion, sexuality, and the individual and community

Inspiration for The Final Cut:

A. The Cold War nuclear build up

B. The Falkland Islands

C. The Awarding of ship building contracts to the Japanese while English ship builders were unemployed.

D. Disillusioned with post war dream, Waters felt that his father, and others, who died in WWII were betrayed.

The album: A man listening to current event on his car radio drifts into contemplation of what went wrong with the post war dream.

The song: Still driving in his car the man "suffer(s) premonitions . . . of the holocaust to come."

Fresh from the "Web"

"Four reasons We May See Nuclear War In 1999"

Question: As you listen to the song imagine you are in the car. Can you empathize the futility of war? Which do you feel is more likely to happen "Two Suns . . ." or The Parable of the Sower?

Sources:

"Four Reasons We May See Nuclear War In 1999."

Jones, Cliff. Another Brick in the Wall: The Stories Behind Every Pink Floyd Song. New York: Carlton Books, 1996.

Schaffner, Nicholas. Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey. New York: Dell, 1991.