Tom Waits

The song “What’s he building in there?” by Tom Waits is a song that has many different possible meanings. Some may think that the man is building something strange or dangerous, while others may think they know what the man is specifically building. These are good theories, but they are incorrect. The true focus is not even what he is building. It is the ridiculous paranoia. The reasons why the narrators paranoia is the focus of the song is because he makes ridiculous assumptions, and he does not understand the meaning of privacy. In the story there are numerous times the narrator makes a claim, but has no real evidence to back it up. These claims are assumptions, and they can be very dangerous. They are dangerous because if these assumptions turn out to be false, they can be extremely harmful. One example of this in history was when president Busch in invaded Iraq, thinking there where weapons of mass destruction there. There whereat any, and this caused many problems. Although the assumptions in the story are not on such a large scale, they still carry a great weight. So when you begin to look at the story as a whole, when he is making a assumptions like "I'll bet he spent a little time in jail". There is almost no way for him to know if that is true or not. When he assumes something like that, he could tell others that, and it could show the man in a bad light. There is also the assumption that whatever he is building, could be bad or harmful. The whole tone of the story is that the narrator thinks that whatever the man is building cant be good. Why would you automatically assume that when the man has done nothing bad. The only things he has done is been a little different, and has kept to himself. This brings me to my next point, which is that the narrator needs to understand that people have a right to there own privacy. The last line of the story sums it all up, "We have a right to know". No you don't, why would you or anyone have a right to know