Young Writers Society

For this assignment, I had to take song lyrics and relate them to a worldview, which, in this case, was Naturalism. A definition is provided further down. I know the length looks intimidating, but there's a lot of open space.


“Four Pails” by Peter Hammill

Four pails of water and a bag full of salts.
That is all we are, that is all a man comprises,
Chemicals alone, with no spirit, soul or ghost -
Nothing so bizarre.
No amount of faith disguises
What is true is what we fear the most

Nothing can survive
Save the things men leave behind them.
Any other case would be really too absurd -
If thoughts remained alive
Surely modern science would find them?
No, the soul is nothing but a word.

All the wonders Man achieves
Emerge from cerebral tissue.
Chemical reactions' ebb and surge
Form that Thing that is you....
It's a sad philosophy,
But better sad than wrong.
Face the truth instead:
When you're dead you're dead,
When you're gone you're gone...
Now she's gone.

Four pails of water and a bag full of salts.
That is all she was, all my lover represented -
That sounds just as mad as saying she will never die.
Fools may clutch at straws
But truth must not be circumvented:
As the tree falls, so must that tree lie!

Now that sounds so odd...
Once I would have preached it brightly.
Now questions appear I rationally can't ignore...
Nothingness or God,
Which of them seems more unlikely?

Once I would have answered clearly,
Now I only think I'm nearly sure.


A brief summary of the Naturalism worldview:

a worldview in which science is the only true way to find truth and/or reality, and the world is completely materialistic in the sense that all things that exist can be seen with the eye or are the interactions between those things. In the mind of a Naturalist, there are no supernatural beings or occurrences. Naturalists would say that they base their faith (or knowledge, rather, considering there is no faith involved) in hard, factual, empirical evidence. They claim to view the world with absolute objectivity, and many would say that religious people are deluding themselves, spoiling their knowledge with a desire for a higher being, maybe even pressing their wishful thinking into something more. Freud, a very influential man in beginning Naturalist works, theorized that perhaps mental illness was a possible factor as to why people believed in God, though this belief is not widely used in modern thinking. This worldview, obviously, takes away any possibility of there being a God.


I have selected the song “Four Pails of Water” by Peter Hammill on which to do my project. The title itself is a reference to the amount of water in the human body, a declaration of sorts that we are simple scientific creatures. Throughout the song, Hammill is extremely blunt about both the message and his personal beliefs, which are extremely Naturalist, though they start to waver towards the end. His initial firm belief is present right from the beginning:

“Four pails of water and a bag full of salts.
That is all we are, that is all a man comprises,
Chemicals alone, with no spirit, soul or ghost”

This is pretty much the definition of a human being from a Naturalist point of view. He not only goes through scientific facts about the body, but then continues on to clearly state that we are soulless beings that are dominated through chemical reactions. The next line especially hits this point hard:

“Nothing so bizarre”.

It not only reinforces the meaning of the last line, but actually goes so far as to call a soul “bizarre”. Personally, I can think of a lot of way to describe the concept of a soul, but “bizarre” does not immediately come to mind. It seems almost as if Hammill finds this concept unnatural, perhaps a reason for his adopting this worldview.
The next two lines bring another reference, this time to other religious people:

“No amount of faith disguises
What is true is what we fear the most”

In these lines, Hammill beings to insinuate that perhaps people run towards the idea of God because His absence would carry such a terrifying implication of emptiness. He states “What is true is what we fear the most,” which means that the absence of God is something that people deny, because it’s their worst fear. They would much rather live in denial and devote their lives to something that doesn’t exist rather than accept the truth.


The next stanza can be read in its entirety:

“Nothing can survive
Save the things men leave behind them.
Any other case would be really too absurd -
If thoughts remained alive
Surely modern science would find them?
No, the soul is nothing but a word.”

This stanza reiterates that there is no soul. It also goes into more depth about the Naturalist view on the afterlife and questions the even remote possibility of an afterlife, because no such thing has been detected by modern science. However, much to Hammill’s chagrin I’m sure, this statement in itself has brought along its own sort of faith: a faith in science. By saying that science would find signs of the afterlife, Hammill has pressed too-high expectations into it, and has created his own faith based on facts.

“All the wonders Man achieves
Emerge from cerebral tissue.
Chemical reactions' ebb and surge
Form that Thing that is you....
It's a sad philosophy,
But better sad than wrong.
Face the truth instead:
When you're dead you're dead,
When you're gone you're gone...
Now she's gone.”

This stanza is mostly Hammill restating that all aspects of humanity are scientific. It’s relating the human body to chemicals and brain impulses again, declaring emotion is simply created by chemical reactions and cerebral tissues, an extremely Naturalist statement.
He always states that while accepting this truth might seem like a bleak future, it’s better to be sad than ignorant. Accepting that you are living for this lifetime, instead of yearning for the heaven after life is only the accepting of truth. Hammill then makes a seemingly unrelated reference to a “she” who evidently died, and because there is no afterlife, is gone forever.

“Four pails of water and a bag full of salts.
That is all she was, all my lover represented -
That sounds just as mad as saying she will never die.
Fools may clutch at straws
But truth must not be circumvented:
As the tree falls, so must that tree lie!”

This is yet another reiteration of the scientific aspects of humanity in the first line. However, Hammill also brings in another element of a lover who has died. He begins to bring in some emotion though, in order to connect with the listener (or reader, in this case) greater than a Naturalist often does through their scientific and objective arguments. In doing this, Hammill has compromised the objectivity that he claims drives his reason and keeps him from collapsing under the pressure of religion. He continues to falter in his worldview as he questions humanity being limited to pure scientific representation. He goes as far as to say that perhaps limiting someone to science is just as absurd as the concept of an immortal soul. But, then he concludes the stanza with his earlier stated faith, as if he doubted himself for a moment, and then shoved himself back into the box he had created.

“Now that sounds so odd...
Once I would have preached it brightly.
Now questions appear I rationally can't ignore...
Nothingness or God,
Which of them seems more unlikely?”

Here Hammill reflects on his doubt, and seem unsure of himself altogether. He questions his worldview and that of religious people, but in the last two lines, it seems that he yet again pulls himself back to where he was. By saying, “more unlikely” rather than “likely” he seems to imply that having a God is not only a difficult concept to fathom and unrealistic, but altogether unlikely.

“Once I would have answered clearly,
Now I only think I'm nearly sure.”

This last stanza shows how Hammill has ended up undermining his own worldview with his emotions. Naturalists tend to forget that we are emotional creatures, that we feel and we love, and it really is impossible to view the world with complete objectivity. They may blame this on simple chemical reactions and cerebral impulses, but the truth is, there is more to that. Sometimes, it takes a tragedy or triumph for people to realize this. Once Hammill brought in his dead lover to the equation, he seemed to realize this discrepancy in his worldview, and it seemed to come tumbling down around him, where he landed in doubt.

Hey Perse!

This is really good! The text itself is well written and explained, and looks good on the page. You've also presented some really interesting views.

First, a tiny nitpick, you missed a capital A at the beginning of the brief summary.

Slang: Try to avoid little slang phrases like 'pretty good,' they degrade your writing a bit. Also, saying 'good' has a more powerful effect than 'pretty good,' which in writing shows much more confidence and deliberation in your opinion.

Big issue: Don't forget your conclusion! I like the brief summary that comes before the actual introduction, and the stanza by stanza structure works well, but you have to remember to bring it all to some kind of conclusion, it's the grand finale! You can't do without it.

Sorry I couldn't offer more critisism, I hope this helps a bit.

I second everything that Tenyo said, basically. Especially the bit about the conclusion. Right now, the paper feels quite incomplete, as if you just stopped writing it after you finished analyzing the final stanza.

A good conclusion, I think, would be to focus and explicate a bit more on how Hammill's view changed throughout the course of the song and, basically pulling all the pieces together in a summary that makes your conclusion obvious: that even Naturalists, for all they decry faith, fall prey to blind belief themselves.

(At least, that was the point I gathered.)