In the song “Burden in My Hand” Chris Cornell uses clever irony, descriptive imagery, and negative characterization to put the point across that having a lover or partner is just a burden and not necessary. The artist made this song to show you a negative aspect of a partner, when they are normally thought of as a good thing.
The artist uses descriptive imagery to give you a picture in your head and so you can see how negatively they can affect you. He says to "drown in alcohol" towards the beginning of the song. Usually when people are in a bad place or sad they will drink a lot to try and forget. There is a picture put in your head with this that you will need to drink a lot to forget about a partner or live with them. Also in the song after it says "she goes” he is "in the sunshine the sun is mine". This shows when his partner leaves he is all full of sunshine and happy, which for the sake of the relationship, it is not good. That shows he is better without them and is happier when she is gone. He says "I shot my love" towards the middle of the song and this clearly means he does not like them. When you go that far and kill them you must not be able to stand them and hate them a lot because that is serious. The pictures put in your head with this song show you very well that he does not like his partner.
There is clever irony in the song to show the bad side of having a partner. He tells them to "follow me into the desert as thirsty as you are" meaning you will have to do what they say. This shows you are restricted with a partner and cannot do what you want to do. It is ironic because the point of having a partner is to both do things you like together and be happy, that is not happening here. It is said to "kill your health and kill yourself and everything you love", which would not make sense if you have a partner. The irony here is that what you expect which would be being happy does not happen and the opposite happens. In the end here you are dead and everything you "love" is dead too. The irony here shows you that people think they know what will happen sometimes but in the end the opposite of what they expect happens.
The negative characterization helps you see how bad of a person your partner can be and how bad his is. He says "I left her in the sand just a burden in my hand" describing how his partner is just a nuisance. His logic is if they are such a bad person you might as well leave them behind or "in the sand". The partner is described and "Just an anchor on my heart", which would mean they are holding him down. He cannot love anything because this person is controlling him and holding him down to only love one person and only see one person. They are also "just a tumor in my head", as he says and that clearly is not a good thing. They are like a lump on your head that annoys you and you cannot get it off because you are attached. He is "in the dark" because of them and apparently never in a good mood because he has a partner.
As this song describes it, having a partner is a bad thing. They hold you down, depress you, restrict you and are just bad people for the most part. You can now imagine what it is like to have a horrible partner and have to live with it. The irony of having a bad partner is clear to see because of their actual purpose. When you have to live with a person whose character is terrible it is just now worth it. There are a lot of negative sides to having a partner.
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