Pink Floyd "Another Brick in the Wall" Thinkwrite

Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” conveys students’ resistance to the conformity forced upon them by educational institutions through the use of imagery and point of view. The song is told from the point of view of a student who resents the idea that every student is essentially the same in the eyes of the school system, and that students should be taught to look, act, and think in the same way. This idea of conformity is conveyed through the image of the brick wall. Each brick in a wall is exactly the same as every other brick, and according to school teachers, each student is nothing more than “just another brick in the wall.” The student’s resistance to this idea is shown through the lines “we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control.” The improper grammar used in these lines is designed to reflect the student’s resistance to the ideas that they are taught by their school system. The video for this song echoes these same ideas of conformity, and conveys these ideas through the powerful imagery used throughout the video. In the video, the students march in lockstep towards a brick tunnel, and exit the other side of the tunnel wearing blank, featureless masks. These masks represent the idea that each student should be taught to look, act, and think in the exact same way. Furthermore, the students are then marched along a conveyor belt, and are dropped into a giant meat grinder. In the ground up meat that comes out of the grinder, it is completely impossible to distinguish one student from another, which echoes the idea of complete and total conformity. However, the video ends with images of the students destroying the brick walls of the school and rebelling against their teachers, which conveys the students’ resistance to the conformity that is forced upon them by their teachers.