2. This opening shot of the young boy coming to the door
and us seeing his small hand in contrast to the large door
knob emphasizes just how small/ young the boy is.
3. When the boy sees the man in the military uniform
and his head drops down it implies to us that
something is wrong. The fact the song has not even
started yet and there is just a somber sounding piano
in the background adds to this.
4. The music of the song begins to play after the boy
has heard the news from the military officer and as
he turns away from his mother. Thus symbolizing
that he is turning away from what he knows and is
going to guard himself in his “Castle of Glass”.
5. As the singer starts to sing the first lines of the song
the house begins to deteriorate around him, due to
what we assume to be the death of the boys father, as
the song is about the families of those who have lost
people in the Armed Forces, we can assume that this is
a metaphor for the boys world collapsing around him.
The use of the house deteriorating around the singer is
a clear example of Sven Carlsson’s Electric Shaman.
6. The way the camera quickly switches between the boy and
his mother, the mother looking like she is moving on or at
least trying too, and the boy isolating himself is shows how
the death of the boys father is taking a much heavier toll
on him so that the boy can’t see past “crack in the castle of
glass” as although this is only a small part of his life he is
struggling to deal with the enormity of it to him personally.
7. As the boy enters his fathers study we hear the line
“show me how to be whole again” this is a symbol of
the boy trying to fix the crack in the “castle of glass” by
going to the place he associates with his father.
8. “Only a crack in this castle of glass” Metaphor that the
death of the boys father will not result in his world
falling down, but it is only one bad thing in a lifetime
of good ones.
9. Putting on his fathers hat after seeing his medals
shows us that the boy has taken inspiration from his
father, something we see a few moments later when
the boy looks up and he is now fully grown and we see
he too has joined the Armed Forces like his father had.
10. Seeing the grown up boy visiting a little girl like the
other soldier visited him at the start of the video,
most likely to give her the same terrible news,
shows us how the boy has come full circle but that
also while the loss of his father was a huge life
altering experience for the boy really he is a small
cog in a much larger machine.
