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Colleen Bradley
Rough Draft
30 April 2013
A Visual Argument
Growing up in a sheltered home and a safe community, the issues of drugs and violence
never left me scared to live. I grew up in a town where when violent breaking news would
appear on the television screen, I never once worried it was anywhere near my home. None of
my peers had any type of drug addiction or history of violence in their past. Life for me as a teen
was basically simple. With that being said, I never really recognized what other teens in other
parts of the country might be experiencing. I never gave any thought to the fact that some teens
lived their day to day lives in complete depression due to the fact that they are heavily addicted
to a substance. Many young teens are troubled and often feel like there is no way anyone can
help them. The song How to Save a Life by The Fray deals with this difficult topic. The song
discusses a situation in which the singer is trying to help a troubled teen who is spiraling towards
damage and destruction (songfacts.com). What makes this song so meaningful and passionate is
simply due to the fact that the artist wrote the song from a true experience. Teens deal with their
pain in a way that no other age group does. They feel like nobody understands them and that no
one will ever get what they are going through and experiencing. It is a mentality that their life
can never go back to the way it once was, and that nobody can help them achieve that goal. The
video for this song is a visible, visual argument for troubled teens and puts the message into a
whole new perspective.
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Upon first hearing this song, I did not connect the lyrics with the topic of troubled youth.
I felt that the song was about a man who was not able to save a friend from an accident because
he did not physically know how to stop him from dying. Before seeing the music video for the
first time, I did happen to look up the actual meaning to this song. I did this because I just felt
such a strong connection between the singer and the lyrics. The lead singer of The Fray, Isaac
Slade, was a counselor at a summer camp for troubled teens. He was assigned to one specific
seventeen year old boy who was heading down a path of serious destruction. In the beginning of
the song, the singer tells the story of when the parents of the child first sat him down to discuss
his issues. He explains how the boy did not want to be having the conversation with his parents,
and tuned them out during the whole conversation (Wikipedia.org). The chorus of How to Save
a Life talks about how the singer feels personally responsible for not being able to successfully
help the troubled teen (azlyrics.com). By the end of the summer, the youth was still in the same
state of mind that he was in before, and kept continuing down the road the singer tried so hard to
thwart. Slade became very close with the teen over the summer and eventually labeled him as a
friend (songfacts.com). The song reads, “Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend, somewhere
along in the bitterness…” (azlyrics.com). He became so close with the teen that when he failed in
helping him, he felt as though he had failed his friend. During the process, he began to feel like
he was unequipped to handle this type of situation. The singer states, “I was never given a
manual on how to save him.” (songfacts.com). In the second verse of the song, the singer sings,
“Lay down a list of what is wrong, The things you've told him all along, And pray to God, he
hears you, And I pray to God, he hears you.” (azlyrics.com). He is saying here that all he could
think to do was address the problems and hope that he hears how bad the outcome of those
actions can be.
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Over the years, many different television shows and movies have used this song to
dramatize a specific scene (Wikipedia.org). However, the shows have used the song as a way of
connecting with a hospital scene or a death scene. The music video for How to Save a Life,
directed by Mark Pellington, describes a whole other situation than other people would have
thought. Instead of relating with everyone else that used the song and use it for some type of
hospital scenario, the director and song writer chose to stick with original message of the song.
The music video entails an assortment of teenagers that seem to be struggling in one way or
another. Throughout the video, there are numbered steps that are displayed periodically on the
screen. The steps listed seem to be steps that a therapist might give to someone who is dealing
with a loss or depression. Or, in the songwriters case, what a camp counselor might tell the
person they were assigned to try and help over the summer. These over a hundred or so steps
include phrases like, “Let it go, be strong, forgive, and don’t fear death.” All of these steps are
placed in front of the troubled teens that seem to be upset or crying. Towards the end of the
video, it seems that the teens are responding to the helpful sayings and are beginning to
overcome their depression. They seem to be accepting their troubles and realizing that they just
need to get some help. In one scenario, there is a young girl who has been crying. Towards the
end, they show her jumping off of an oversized large chair. However, it shows her firmly
landing on her feet and getting back up again. It symbolizes that she overcome whatever
struggle she was going through. There is an issue of children and teenagers dealing and coping
with the loss of a loved one in the video. The video shows the teenagers bed side next to an
elderly person, or a picture of their elderly loved one. After a step came up saying that they need
to release, it shows the girls moving away from the bed, or letting go of the picture, and smiling
and walking away.
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During this whole video, The Fray is singing the song in front of a white back drop. The tone of
the setting is very somber and sorrowful (youtube.com).
Furthermore, one of the biggest messages in this whole video does not involve any vision
of a troubled youth. Throughout the whole video, there are images of caterpillars and butterfly’s.
This represents the process of transformation. In the article “The Butterfly metaphor for
transformation”, the author states, “The metaphor of the caterpillar turning into a butterfly means
it is befitting a time for transformation – new beginnings and paradigm shifts” (John Renesch).
The way this metaphor is sporadically placed throughout the video is an intelligent and creative
way of getting the message of recovery across.
To the band, the message of the song means more to them than most artists making a
music video. The topic of troubled youth or “at-risk youth” hits home for them and you can tell
that visually through the video. When looking at the bigger message of this video, the help of atrisk teens has been gradually improving over the years. However, many young persons all
around the world still struggle with their day to day lives. The Mayo Clinic defines teen
depression as “a serious medical problem that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of
interest in activities. It affects how your teen thinks, feels and behaves, and it can cause
emotional, functional and physical problems. Although mood disorders, such as depression, can
occur at any time in life, symptoms may be different between teens and adults”
(Mayoclinic.com). About twenty percent of adolescents will experience teen depression prior to
reaching adulthood. Between ten to fifteen percent of teenagers experience at least some
symptoms of depression at any given time. Most teens will suffer from more than one episode of
depression. About twenty to forty percent of teens will experience more than one episode within
a period of two years, and seventy percent of troubled teens will experience another episode
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before adulthood. The average episode of teen depression lasts about eight months
(parentresources.hubpages.com). No matter what the reason is for the teenagers in the video,
they are all depressed and hurting in the same way. Children often feel like no one else is feeling
the way they are feeling, and that because of that, no one can bring them out of their depression.
The singer of The Fray discusses how the teen he was helping was extremely suicidal
(songfacts.com). The Nation Alliance on Mental Illness states, “Most everyone at some time in
his or her life will experience periods of anxiety, sadness, and despair. These are normal
reactions to the pain of loss, rejection, or disappointment. Those with serious mental illnesses,
however, often experience much more extreme reactions, reactions that can leave them mired in
hopelessness. And when all hope is lost, some feel that suicide is the only solution”
(teenagesuicide.nami.org). More teenagers and young adults die of suicide than from cancer,
heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia and influenza, and chronic lung disease
combined (teenagesuicide.nami.org). The main cause of teenage suicide has to do with some
sort of substance abuse. When teens are heavily addicted to a substance and then something
goes wrong in their life, they simply cannot handle it as well as others. For instance, the divorce
of their parents, a bad break up with a partner, or a death in the family. When these types of
devastating situations occur, the substance abusing teens are too vulnerable to be able to
withstand the pain of that experience. So, with that being said, they choose to end their lives
instead of seeking help and overcoming their pain like most other teens do. However, over the
years, at-risk teens are retrieving more and more help due to the fact that adults are becoming
more aware of the situation. More organizations, camps, and support groups have opened up and
become totally available for kids to utilize and become a part of. Since these have become more
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viable, it is making teens realize that they are not so alone in this whole process. If gives them
opportunities to reflect on their issues, and to hear other peoples issues too (atrisk.org).
I believe this music video is of high quality. I believe that for what the author of the song
was trying to get across, the music video suffices and accomplishes that goal. Although the
video does just consist of images of multiple teens being upset, it makes you realize that this
song is not about not knowing how to save someone if they are dying from say a car accident or
any other type of freak accident. However, some people do not agree. One website even voted it
the worst music of all time (nme.com). The reasoning behind their hatred was simply due to the
fact that they did not understand where the song writer was coming from. People nowadays
probably would have liked to see some type of dramatic hospital scene where someone
drastically dies. That is just not what this song is about though. The video vividly depicts the
message that they were trying to get across that should be all that matters to the people listening
or to The Fray.
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Work Cited
50 Worst Music Videos Ever | #9 - The Fray - 'How To Save A Life' | NME.COM." NME.COM.
IPC Media Entertainment Network, 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
"At-Risk Youth." At-Risk Youth. At-risk Blog, 2004. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Gilpin, Jasmine-Rose. ""How To Save A Life" Lyrics." THE FRAY LYRICS. Azlyrics.com,
2010. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
How to Save a Life (song)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Apr. 2013. Web. 28 Apr.
2013.
How To Save A Life." By The Fray Songfacts. N.p., 2009. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
The Fray. “How to Save a Life.” How to Save a Life. Sony Records, 2006. Music Video.
Dir. Mark Pellington. MTV. 6 December 2006.
Hubpages. "Troubled Teens Statistics." HubPages. HubPages Inc, 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Renesch, John. "The Butterfly Metaphor for Transformation." John Renesch RSS2. N.p., 2012.
Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Staff, Mayo Clinic. "Teen Depression Definition." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical
Education and Research, 07 Nov. 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
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Apendix
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Peer Reviews
Author: Colleen Bradley
Peer Reviewer: David Mannheimer
1.
The introduction starts with a personal anecdote explaining differences in the author’s
home life and community in contrast with the outside world. The anecdote reveals vast
differences in both of these worlds, and goes on to relate the author’s initial interest in the song
to the rest of the teenage world after doing a little research. The introduction is well developed,
and introduces the song, as well as a little background information about it and the cultural issue
at hand of teenage substance abuse, leading to depression, and possibly suicide, all of which the
author draws connections to in the song itself.
2.
This paper shows excellent organization and very strong overall development. Each
individual paragraph is very well developed; there was only one that threw me off a little because
of its brevity, the paragraph starting with “Furthermore, one of the biggest messages…”. I feel
perhaps a little more content could be put into this paragraph so as to have its length equal those
of the others.
3.
The author presents a very strong analysis of this video. At my first viewing of the video
before reading this paper, I would not have assumed this song was about teenage substance abuse
and depression. The author does a very clear and thorough job of explaining the symbolism
present in the visual and audial portions of this combination.
4.
The argumentative structure was very strong, although I feel it was slightly modified in
this case, but not in a way to detract from the power of the paper itself. All three major points in
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this paper are very serious, and I feel they were addressed in the order of their importance,
namely substance abuse, teenage depression, and teenage suicide respectfully.
5.
Source work is highly relevant to the topics presented in the introduction and is integrated
into the paper in a way that still utilizes the author’s own tone and voice, as well as supporting
her own opinions.
6.
The paper is very focused and on track.
7.
All sources have been cited correctly and all sources are highly relevant to the topic and
information represented. Please refer to question two in regards to possible strengthening with
additional sources and research.
8.
Very few grammatical and syntactical errors, I’ve only spotted 3 in the whole paper.
Overall, this is a very strong and well developed paper. I admire your insight as to taking on this
issue relevant to our age group.
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