vegetable

By Alex Jones

Vegetable is a slang expression for someone who is brain dead. The lyrics in this song lead me to believe that there was a man, a wedded man who got in an accident he doesn't remember. "Ran around in domestic bliss"

the line "Fought hard, died hard" refers to the fight with illness, and ultimate 'brain death'. However, the man is not brain dead, he is aware of what is happening in the hospital room around him, but he has lost touch with that world through his apparent "Vegetable" State. He sees his loving marriage falling apart right in front of him because of his state, and he is helpless to the fact.

By eskimonkey@hotmail.com

I do not think the narrator has literally become an invalid. My feeling is that over the years of marriage and domestic life his soul has numbed (a la No Surprises) and he feels an uncontrollable urge to lash out, to get some kind of rise out of himself and the boring people around him. "I'm not a vegetable! I will not control myself!" I picture a middle-aged man at thanksgiving yelling this aloud while everyone else tries to calm him down, settle him back into the straight-and-narrow. He realizes the "domestic bliss" wasn't the life he wanted in the first place, but he has responsibilities and is unable to escape it, in that sense, he's a vegetable (but only figuratively).