FIRST TIME HEARING | The Doors - The End 

It's based on the Novel, but entirely different. I have read "Hearts of Darkness." Its plodding and not a page turner. By comparison "Notes from the Underground," was a breeze.

My thoughts reflect back to the first time I heard it. But yeah.... the movie, the song was just so fitting for the image.

A movie that was less about the fighting, and almost all about the psychological traumas of war.

Oedipal section is metaphor for his current culture. To break its manacles. Fight authority (father) and kill off established order of that period and embrace the fruits of nature, Passion (mother)…. You’re right, this harkens back to historical motifs and symbolism of western culture. Spanning Ancient Greek/Rome to modern media connected usa. It hints to cycle of western culture coming to an end in a near biblical prophetic nature. The snake is truth, wisdom, fate and time across the 7 millenniums of the culture from Egypt and Rome to present. The snake returning to the lake is symbolic for the civilization nearing the end of its cycle. A break up song that scales up to encompass the culture in wh/ shaped him. Blake meets Joseph Campbell. No rock band scaled so broad in a song as this one did.

@@kelvinkloud The snake is a symbol of chaos, partial truth and partial wisdom. We learn from chaos but can only live in order. 426 BC! Just think in 426 BC there were men thinking and writing in Greece, now a tiny insignificant country, that influenced thought forever. I have a Greek coin that was minted in 470 BC! It's a small plop of silver with a barely discernable turtle. When I hold it, I always think that Pericles may have handled it.

@@jackasswhiskyandpintobeans9344 … from chaos comes order. But a cycle ending wh/ parches, salts and fire clears a civilz cleans a slate. Morrison took a grim, some may say honest view where the west was in ‘66 to present (assuming a poet sees a vision for his potential span on earth (80 if was still alive))… he was of military lineage & was alive during Hiroshima, so his stark view is understandable… I’ve read your takes before & you get that what he draws out in some of his long songs wasn’t just random trippy phrases to sell records (though I’m sure it was partly). He really was a Blake and Joseph Campbell deep dive reader. Military well read people & offspring like Patton & Jim’s dad & Jim himself also knew and understood the long historical arc of empire & the west. They understood ancient Athens, Cairo & Rome very well. & they understood symbolic construed prophecy in Danial… the end started inspiration in trauma (Mary breakup) and came to final form in a flash of deep exploration as one’s station homeland wise in the long arc from wh/ his civilz dna was hatched… the movement of that snake is the arc and catalyst appetite of a civilz birth (Ancient Greek/Rome/Egypt) to death (ancient lake, modern west on precipice of post atomic destruction). Yet, it’s not a death song b/c it compels the protagonist by the end to find and declare a new sustaining way. The end is of the old order imo, not the end of life or man…. Riders interestingly is the final bookend to this song and theme imo. Whether it was conscious or happenstance or both. The difference is it lays out more hope of the present. It’s not as resolute that the snake will sink into the sea. Rather it’s saying we are near or at the fork. Pick up the hitcher and devolve into madness or ride on, endure the storm, learn from it, find love & eternal sustainment. It was both warning, yet hope to the homeland before he checked out.

When I read Oedipus Rex I was in High School, and the immediate thing I thought about was this song.

@@kelvinkloud I am an order person, yet I like a bit of chaos. I feel uncomfortable when my house is not orderly, but the items in my house are very dusty. I haven't watched the interview with Morrison's Dad. I can't watch it. You write many pithy thoughts.

Notice it moves, has length and returns to the ancient lake. It’s a metaphor for not only impending chaos but also the span of truth and power spanning the beginnings of western culture in Rome 7k years to present. The cycle coming to an end.