Alice's Restaurant

When the song "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie was mentioned in class today I was elated! I was forced to sit and listen to that song every single Thanksgiving since I can remember when The Moose, a local radio station played it in honor of the holiday, once in the morning and once in the evening. Holy COW!!!! It's a long song. If you want to hear it here is a link to a live performance and the lyrics. Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant lyrics LyricsMode.com



I took the time to read the lyrics for the first time today. (I am honestly disgusted with myself too! No one has to tell me.) Wow! I never realized what that song was about. I think it is a war protest song now. When I was a kid being tortured to death by that song twice a day once a year, I thought it was just another crappy holiday song that was a prelude of the even crappier Christmas songs to start the next day. I wish I could go back and force myself to enjoy those days even though now I enjoy thinking of them. All of this is not pointless rambling... it is just proof that "you can get anything you want at alice's restaurant". "Alice's Restaurant" brings to mind happy memories, dreadful feelings, food, garbage, police, blind people and now war protests among other things. There are many underlying meanings to "Alice's Restaurant" which brings me to my next point.



I would like to argue the quote from class, "what it means is what it is." I do understand this is a start to interpreting and analyzing any form of literature, but it is not the only way to look at it. Words have meanings and inferences and weights added to them differently for different people, though generally equal across social groups. These words begin to hold meaning parallel with memories which hold meaning, making them more weighted for that individual because they refresh memories. So, I am not trying to argue that words do not hold a definite meaning, but that phrases or words can trigger memories that do mean more.