Rhetorical Analysis of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy"

Suicide, self-loathing, depression. All common issue of today's younger generation. Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" brings this to the surface. Many see that these problems are becoming more and more known among the youth of today. Jeremy Wade Delle, a sophmore at Richardson High School, shot himself in front of his English II class as on Tuesday, January 8,1991, and somewhat began this era of school shootings and suicides. He rarely went to class and that day his teacher, Mrs. Faye Barnett, asked him to go get an attendence slip from the front office. When returning to class, Jeremy pulled out a .357-caliber Magnum of his pocket and shot himself in front of the entire class. Many articles and news reports were done soon after the incident and many people were curious to find out the real story. One of these readers was the lead singer of the popular rock band Pearl Jam (Eddie Vedder). Vedder was moved by the story and felt the need to make people, especially teens, how big a deal suicide and depression is.


In the song "Jeremy", the overall tone forces the listeners analyze what they just heard and possibly realize the severity of teen suicide. The students and fellow classmates of Jeremy Wade Delle all felt guilty that they didn't try and help him before he made such a big decision to take his own life. Danny Glick, the vice president of Richardson High's peer counseling group said, "Everybody I talked to said the same thing:They wish they could've said or done something before he took his life."(Dallas Morning News. www.sshep.com)Guilt is well represented in the song's lyrics to express how the actual students felt, "we unleased a lion..", "try to erase this..from the blackboard". Pearl Jam's ultimate goal was not to promote suicidal thoughts in teens, it is the complete opposite. In the uncut version of the "Jeremy" music video, there are images that flash on and off the screen. One of these images reads out "64 degrees and cloudy". Normal day right? Nothing too out of the ordinary. After the graphic scene in which "Jeremy" puts the gun in his mouth and commits sucicide, that same image of "64 degrees and cloudy" flashes onto the screen once again. This is expressing that suicide solves no problems, and that nothing changed for the better. His suicide effected many people, but showing those same perfect weather conditions before and after the suicide in the music video also tells people that it isn't going to solve anything.