As I mentioned in an earlier post, I interpret "The End" as being about a coup d'etat in South Vietnam in 1963--although I may be the only one who has come up with such an interpretation. Here is some of the symbolism in the song:
- Stranger's hand--foreign aid
- desperate land--South Vietnam
- Roman wilderness of pain--government-by-coup-d'etat, ancient Roman style
- children are insane--South Vietnam'm coup-happy military elite
- King's highway--Route 1, the "street without joy"
- Weird things inside the gold mine--the State Dept. or CIA
- summer rain--South Vietnam's summer rainy monsoon
- West--SEATO
- snake--the Soviet bloc
- ancient lake--Communism
- seven miles--The Warsaw Pact's seven members
- he's old...--Nikita Khrushchev or Ho Chi Minh
- blue bus--military vehicle in which Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were held before they were killed
- killer--General Duong Van Minh
- ancient gallery--the CIA or USIA
- hall--the presidential palace
- sister--Tran Le Xuan, Diem's sister and Nhu's wife, and South Vietnam's "first lady"--in Los Angeles at the time of the coup
- father--President Ngo Dinh Diem
- brother--Ngo Dinh Nhu
- mother--Tran Le Xuan or journalist Marguerite Higgins, defender of Diem and author of Our Vietnam Nightmare (New York: Harper, 1965)