"Jeremy" by Pearl Jam

The song “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam is about a boy who is bullied at school, has no friends, and receives no love or attention from his parents at home. The song starts with the boy drawing pictures of himself sitting on top of the sun with his “arms raised in a ‘V’” symbolizing victory over the “dead laying in pools of maroon below”. This describes how corrupted this little boy’s mind is because little boys don’t usually draw pictures of themselves sitting victoriously over dead people.

In the second verse, the singer takes the character of a school mate of Jeremy’s who bullied him. He says, “It seemed harmless” but ends up “unleashing a lion.” The song backs this up by exemplifying that he attacked the recess lady and hits the singer’s character. This would be considered an antecedent-consequence. Jeremy was already an angry child, so pushing him around would just make him angrier and then cause him to attack.

The chorus shows a lot off guilt coming from the singer’s character, who isn’t necessarily a boy anymore. He explains how bad the boy had it at home and why Jeremy acted out the way he did. Jeremy’s dad “didn’t give attention” to him, and “the boy was something that mommy wouldn’t wear”. Meaning the dad didn’t acknowledge him and the mother could care less he existed because she didn’t show him off and maybe didn’t tell people she even had a son. The chorus ends with, “Jeremy spoke in class today.” This does not necessarily mean words, but killing himself or other people.

The song also says that he’s “trying to erase this from the blackboard”, which possibly means Jeremy’s trying forget the plan for killing himself and/or others but it’s just so hard. The song, overall, has a great message for bullies because bullies are part of the reason why some kids are pushed to violence. Most times, bullies don’t realize the lives behind those who are bullied. Those lives can have bad situations that they choose to hide from other people. So the tiniest things can trigger those kids into pulling a physical trigger that could take the lives of themselves and/or others.