The End

To me, this song is about the end of human consciousness, this band is all about experience, and the way we perceive the world, the end refers to either: death, or a death of consciousness, which Jim probably thought he experienced after taking acid... its a fusion of everything that ever was, and everything that ever will be, when everything is known, when it is all experienced what do you have left? The End.....

do you know what i love about this song, it expresses itself as if it were linear like camd419 mentioned above.. its called 'the end' but it takes you on a journey and round in circles when you listen to the music and lyrics.... it's like the meeting point of everything, existence, space and time, experience, all fused into one..

when i picture the images morrison paints with this song, i get the feeling its about death, its that moment just before you die, just before you taken by the spirit of death (grim reeper), your life flashes before your eyes in one massive sequence, it all just comes to you in one hit and you understand everything, the end..... the one and only that tells me its about death and understanding everything is this "can you picture what will be, so limitless and free", something we can't see until the doors of consciousness are unlocked and we see the world for what it really is...

yes: oedipus is the Greek tragedy about the boy who killed his father and then slept with his mother. It is supposed to represent ultimate inevitability (because Oedipus had meant to do neither). Freud's psychoanalysis (in which he was looking for recurring images in myth) attempted to show that this idea - the father-son competetion for the sexual resources of the clan - is part of an underlying strata of human existence.

The song, of course, also represents Christian linearism (beginning/middle/end as opposed to neverending cycles).

Hey man, have you seen the accident outside?, seven people took a ride, six bachelors and their bride, seven people took a ride, dont let me die in an automobile. i want to lie in an open field, i want the snakes to suck my skin want the worms to be my friends, want the birds to eat my eyes as here i lie , the flowers....ode to a grasshopper, i think i'll open a little shop, a little place where thet sell things and i think i'll call it "grasshopper", i have a big green grasshopper out there, you see my grasshopper momma? looking real good, uh oh i blew it its a moth, but thats alright he aint got long to go so we'll forgive him, ensenada the dark crucifix, the dead seal , ghost of the dead car son, STOP THE CAR! IM getting out!! i cant take it, hey look out theres somebody coming and theres nothing you can do about it..

Yeah because to be a good poet, you have to have some fantastic deep meaning to your writings to be taken seriously right? Poetry isn't about trying to impress people with your stupid insights, poetry is about expression. The End is a fantastic expression and it broke countless barriers. Think about when this song was released, and what Jim would do with it on stage. The "Fuck the mother, Kill the father" lines that he got fired from Whiskey for are tame now, but back then, something like this was REVOLUTIONARY. The fact that it does follow a stream-of-consciousness path, by delving into Morrison's mind, is in itself indicitive of great poetry. The ride through Jim's psyche this takes is just proof that Morrison was a great poet, to be able to create structure to his abstract feelings is just proof of his ability. Not because he had some lame political ideology.

Poetry in its greatest form.

"the end" can not be considered as a song. it is above feelings and meanings of a song. It is a ceremony, a requiem...

While everybody is right about the Oedipus complex, they are taking it the wrong way. He is saying to get rid of the ideas that are instilled in you. Kill the father. Get rid of the alien concepts which are not your own thoughts. Kill those ideas. Fuck the mother is about getting back to nature, reality. It's nature it is real it can't lie to you. In the beggining it is about death. Every time we take a trip somebody dies. It's about getting clean "Waiting for the summer rain." Let's get clean. Get back to what is real. Jim told this to their record producer Paul Rothchild, and then told him to interpret it as he will.

yes, you do. there are 2 versions, a rarity then

Jim Morrison was really fascinated with death, and to me this song is the end of life, or death and the end of all of lifes crazzyness and having to deal... or maybe not... i dont know

enrique is right, first it was a short goodbye song for a girl but this song is also famous for being the reason (in his total length) why the Doors were fired from the Whiskey a Go Go in July 1966 and then they went to do their first record...

BTW: There's a good 15:43 minute live-version which includes some more lines.