I just wrote about this for english class, so i thought i might as well add my thoughts:When one first hears “Sleep Now in the Fire”, they hear a song about destruction.
He says the government wants you to believe this is the only way, so take it 'though it made you ill'. The beginning of the last verse states that the hunger for money will lead to the end of the world, and that we are at the brink of disaster. The party are the leaders who profit off American greed. In the second he says that 'the lie is the governments expense for it to attain its craving. At the beginnging of the second and third verse he says two different lines. The cost of my desire, is the greed of American Corporations. The priests of Hiroshima are in reference to all the civillians killed in the A-Bomb drops of 1945. The agents of orange are a chemical agent used in Bio-warfare during Vienam. The fields overseer was the cruel monster who would watch the slaves work, and beat them. He names the Rapist, someone who totally takes advantage of another. He names the noose, which was used on black slaves in a world where 'all men are created equal' and used by self proclaimed vigilantes who would kill those who disagreed with them. He names Colombus' ships, which brought the Anglo-Saxon people to the new world, and eradicated the Native Americans for European greed. The next two verses point out events in which America took advantage of others. His final two lines of the first verse say that his ideals are inside the new generation, and that eventually the young will fix things. He starts off by pointing out that when America gained all of its power, it was trusted to guide the world on a righteous path.(lines1-4) However, corruption led to the power laying in the hands of the greedy, and that while America still shows its supposed high ideals by letting people speak freely and stand for themselves, the promised carte blanche is empty and worthless.(lines 5-7) He goes on to state that Big Brother will protect its 'Pigs' by eliminating those that pose a threat to abidement of the status quo. His loss of faith in the system is discernably deeply rooted as he expresses his scrupulous ideals about the misuse of power. This song of emnity from an extreme liberal reflects his view of American government as intensly conservative. Or I'll drag you to your grave"-(Join with my greed, or die! lol)
So, society's dreams are being put in the fire for the benefit of greed!-"smother the rest in greed"
Ultimetely, the fire is the greed, and when they mean sleep, they are refering to society's achievements, and the american dream. "Sleep now in the fire," means that the acheivements that the lower class people want to get to, have to either rest, or never happen. I always want to think of Arnold Swarzinegger, and how he borrowed 2 billon dollers from school, for some reason. This tells us that since the beginning, we've been developing a greedy higher power, to scam the middle class, or whatever lower class they choose to scam, and those people nclude the perspectives of the song,and they will only scam them to get more and more power. Now, whenever I listen to rage against the machine, I think about how I would’ve written that 9th grade presentation if we had done it on whatever specific song I’m listening to.Ok, so I think this song is all about how America has ultimetely become a greedy nation, from how they refer to the ships sailed by christopher Columbus, from the beginning, which were, the nina, the pinta, the santa maria. I’m pretty sure we got a good grace anyways though. We couldn’t think of an explanation on the spot like that. Our teacher asked us to explain what “sleep now in the fire,” meant, and we panicked. The phrase that’s repeated 100 times in the song. Ironically, my partner and I both forgot to even mention what was meant by “sleep now in the fire.” You know, the name of the song. I eventually settled on sleep now in the fire because it was one of my favorites, and I felt that I could easily explain the message. I knew that I wanted to do a rage against the machine song, but it took me a while to choose which one. My partner didn’t care which song we chose, so I got to choose the song. First we would play the song or music video for the class, and then we would explain to them the meaning behind the song. We were paired off into groups of 2 to make these presentations.
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