How to Save a Life.

The Fray

This song “How To Save A Life By The Fray” This song is based on the fact that the singer was a mentor at a troubled youth camp as a counselor to a teen who was a crack addict and was a suicidal teen at the time. The teen was a recovering addict and coming out of a really tough lifestyle. In the song, when the singer says “he lost a friend”  this made me feel like it could relate to the death or a loss of the friendship he had with that friend, and when he says “how to save a life” I think he’s focusing on the life of the true friend that he was.

At the beginning of the song, it is about all the struggles that the friend was having. One thing that hindered the teen’s lifestyle was his severe drug addiction. The boy does not believe that his drug addiction is a problem in his eyes. He doesn’t reach out for help and doesn’t understand that the people around him want to help and get him to get out of the negative headspace he is in. The teen’s mentor sits him down for a talk, a talk that he hopes he will cooperate in “The friend, he stares politely right at you,” this means he’s doing what he says, and listening to what he has to say, as you would want him to. But the lyrics in this song say “you stare right on through.” these lyrics make me visualize from the mentor’s perspective that you are looking at him during the conversation, knowing its more than just a chat with him. You hope for a better talk than the previous ones you have had, and you hope he actually listens this time. This is all happening when the singer is at the youth camp being a youth counselor.  In this song one of the powerful lyrics he wrote: “You begin to wonder why you came.”  I feel like if I was in this situation with this boy not wanting to be there at the counseling lessons you would start to think he doesn’t want to help himself and nor ever wanting to. You’d start to think your efforts with this troubled teen were very much valueless.

You only try to help, and you blame yourself when he continues on his path of abusing drugs and ignoring his drug addiction. You try but you can’t do it alone. The mentors are blaming himself because he feels that he must have done something wrong along the way. I feel like the mentor feels as if he could have fixed it earlier. “where did I go wrong?” His best friend is lost, and when he couldn’t do enough, he struggles to find the answers to why things happened the way they did. The mentor was wrongly blaming himself for the current situation.

“I would have stayed up, with you all night, had I known, How to save a life”Through these powerful lyrics, I believe the mentor/ friend tried as much as he could to save his friend, and he eventually he lets go. He ends up giving up on him because He didn’t know what else to do at that moment. He would have stayed with him all night if he could, but he didn’t know what else to do to save him. He didn’t know how to save his life.

“let him know that you know best because after all, you do know best.” When someone is addicted, they are too blind by the addiction to notice. He knew best that his friend should not abuse the drugs because he noticed the effects. The friend knew of the risks and the potential losses. The addict didn’t.

I feel like the singer and mentor tried his hardest to convince him that his addiction is and was a big problem in his life. He explained what he’s losing. He wanted to get past all his lies and ignorance his defenses too, “without granting innocence” without telling the abuser, that he hasn’t done anything wrong. The fact is that he has in fact done something wrong, and he currently is. “the list of what is wrong” this lyric is all of the things that he’s struggling with. It’s the things wrong with him. the ways he’s changed. The other things he could lose. The things on this list are the things you’ve been trying to tell him for so long.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest Posts By halcrowl

Category

Writing