Analysis Bartholomew’s Song

Bartholomew’s life was meaningless until he found a machine that played reels. The endless white and beige colors portrayed throughout the film gave testament to the fact that life was dull. The reel-to-reel that Bartholomew found brought new stimulus in his otherwise monotonous life; his soul was moved by the song, and he appeared to begin to have feelings and thoughts of his own for the first time in his life. After listening to the operatic croon over and over, he may have begun to associate the music with freedom of thought. Bartholomew then seemed to have difficulty trying to understand why a droning female voice came over one reel in the work room, and beautiful music came out of another. Bartholomew’s mind struggled to try to fit pieces together, he had lived in a state of nothingness for so long he began to give the impression that he was having trouble accepting the new feelings he experienced from the music. After memorizing the song, Bartholomew begins to question the way he lived, and the way his fellow Bartholomews’ simply followed orders. Bartholomew wanted the people he worked with to feel the music like he had. Since it was Bartholomew’s job to get rid of the “defective” cubes, Bartholomew may have decided that it should also be his job to get rid of the woman’s voice because it was stopping such beautiful music. She was in a sense “defective” to him. After Bartholomew kills the woman who controlled the worker’s room reel, he began to sing his song over the intercom because he hoped to free the people’s mind. Instead of opening the workers minds, however, they become confused and start running into each other. This may have been symbolic of the fact that not everyone can be touched by music and not everyone wants to break free of the “system”. In the end we see a