Guide Questions:
- What motivated Rush to write Red Sector A?
- According to the lyrics, what impact did the camp have on its captives physically and mentally?
- In the song, what hope surfaces for the camp's captives?
- According to the final stanza of the song, what are the captives left thinking and feeling after being freed?
- "Grace Under Pressure" was a concept album that illustrated a bleak, distant future. Given the initial motivation for Rush to write thins song, why do you think Rush chose not to name a particular camp or time period in the song?
Rush's 1984 album "Grace Under Pressure" included the track "Red Sector A." The song, written by drummer Neal Pert, focuses on the experience of a person struggling to survive at an unnamed prison camp. "Red Sector A" was particularly meaningful to the band's lead singer/bassist/keyboardist Geddy Lee:
From "How the Holocaust rocked Rush front man Geddy Lee", Jewish News Weekly, June 25, 2004:The seeds for the song were planted nearly 60 years ago in April 1945 when British soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Lee’s mother, Manya (now Mary) Rubenstein, was among the survivors. (His father, Morris Weinrib, was liberated from Dachau a few weeks later.) The whole album “Grace Under Pressure,” says Lee, who was born Gary Lee Weinrib, “is about being on the brink and having the courage and strength to survive.”
Though “Red Sector A,” like much of the album from which it comes, is set in a bleak, apocalyptic future, what Lee calls “the psychology” of the song comes directly from a story his mother told him about the day she was liberated.
“I once asked my mother her first thoughts upon being liberated,” Lee says during a phone conversation. “She didn’t believe [liberation] was possible. She didn’t believe that if there was a society outside the camp how they could allow this to exist, so she believed society was done in.”
The Lyrics to Red Sector A:
All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves
Is stay alive...
Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones
I clutch the wire fence
Until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal-
A heart that cannot feel-
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow-We'll all be freed
Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger-too weak to cry
I hear the sound of gunfire
At the prison gate
Are the liberators here-
Do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother-it's too late
But I must help my mother
Stand up straight...
Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings
To survive?...
10 comments:
I think Rush wrote the song to explain the horrors of being in a concentration camp. The song explains how the people were like skeletons because of starvation and mistreatment. It also asks the question of if the people will ever be free.
Mooney
Rush wrote this song to explain what his mother was goin through in the concentaration camp. If he scared anyone he didn't mean to all he wanted to do was tell about what happened to his mother because he cares about his mommy very much.
Emmy
rush wrote this song to explain what people went through at concentration camps and that these people fought inside themselves to stay alive in hopes of someday beginning reunited with there families. this mans mother had personally gone through this unimaginable event and he wants to let people know that this time period was very devastating and not everyone realizes that.
ya boy: KFRED
To explain what it was like to be a victim of the Holocaust. You really don’t know if anyone else has survived. Everyone is so weak, hungry that they are all so close to death or they could easily be shot by guards. Since they could hear gunfire, there was a hope that it would be people coming to free them. It is not just one camp, or group of people being the victims. The song can be used to show that violence is everywhere.
~Jennifer~
This song again is expressing the horrors of concentration camps but it is also saying that this concept of modern or future genocide is in no way far off. In fact there is a currently a genocide in Darfur. So lets not forget that the holocaust did happen and not so long ago and if we do not prevent it from happening then it will.
Matt-
I think that this song is meant to portray the horrors of the concentration camps of World War II, but also to recognize the other atrocities that have been committed in the past, and may be committed in the future. What will come of the violence created by the human race? No one can actually answer that truthfully, because no one can see the future at this time. (at least admitedly)
Violence is never a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary to preserve what is good and just in this world of ours. It is a strange concept, the thought that violence will preserve peace, but I guess you need to just have faith...
This song's lyrics are very good. They are descriptive, meaningful, and they flow very well too. Music is a good way to reach out to people, even if in a small way.
Good stuff...
The entire song is true to what we have heard about and read before. Everybody who was involved with the holocaust was hurt and especially the people in the concentration camps. I really don't think that the way that people reacted was enough though and even the people inside were hurt. The hunger pains, the beatings and even the torture. It was horrible and completely wrong!
-Ethan
he wrote this song because many people absorb information better through music, and he wanted to make the information known to as many people as possible. the lyrics say that the captives got sick, went insane, got angry at their god for letting this happen.
ryan
The people that were in the camp had really bad suroundings so people were sick. They may also sick in the head because they had the same thing everyday. Takeing care of dead bodies. Worring wether or not they are going to live until the next day. They get some hope when people come to the gate but they dont know if they should get scared or to be hope full. They feel that they may be the only ones left.
-michelle
This song came into existence because of a story that one of the band's members had heard from their mother, about the day she was liberated from a concentration camp. The camp that the song talks about seems to have drained away all the mental and physical energy of the people in it. it absolutely broke them down. Later in the song, there are guns firing at the gate. That means there is hope of rescue. However, the character of the song isn't sure whether he wants to face what comes when he's liberated, because it might mean finding out things he didn't want to, or that more of his family is dead. In fact, all of the prisoners are scared to think that they're the last people alive. I think that there was no camp mentioned, and no time period stated in the song, so that either your imagination or memories can carry you away, so you can relate to the song.
-Sam Conner
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