PODCAST INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Explained in English. My name is Ki, and today I’m explaining the
song Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles.
SONG INTRO:
So, the song begins with the line:
Ah, look at all the lonely people
I always thought that this line was, “I” look at all the lonely people. But actually it’s the word “ah”, spelled A-H. Ah look at all the lonely people. Ah is a word that shows wonder or
surprise, or amazement. It’s kind of like the word “wow” in English. It’s like saying, “wow, look
at all the lonely people!”.
So, look at is a command. It’s part of the English imperative and it’s meant to direct our eyes
or attention towards something. In this case, we’re meant to focus on the lonely people.
So, lonely people are people who spend time alone. They are without friends or family or
other company to be around. It kind of has the idea of being sad, perhaps wanting to be with
other people but in some way unable to be with other people. So, this line is all about
directing our attention to the lonely people that the writer sees.
Next, we have the first verse and it begins with a name:
VERSE ONE:
Eleanor Rigby
It’s a first and a last name and we don’t exactly know who Eleanor Rigby is, but it certainly
sounds like someone who works in a church. Maybe Eleanor Rigby is a volunteer or could
also be a nun, someone who either lives or works in a church. The next line:
Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
So, a wedding is a marriage ceremony. It’s a celebration of two people forming a new family
or at least a committed partnership. And we have the words “has been” here. Could have
used the words “was”, or that “the wedding was here or took place here. But, I think for
rhyming schemes, Paul McCartney, the writer, uses “has been”.
So, a wedding takes place in a church, and a church is a building where people gather, in
this case, Christians gather to worship in a church. And Eleanor Rigby is in this church after
a wedding and she picks up the rice.
To pick up means to bend down and take hold of something with your hands, so you grab
something. For instance, if you drop your phone you can bend down and pick it up.
Here she’s picking up rice. Rice is a type of food; it’s normally small. It’s a small white grain,
very commonly eaten in Asia. In this case, she’s picking up rice because people have thrown
the rice -- the grains of rice -- at the wedding couple. So, the people who get married, when
they leave the church after the wedding, it’s very common for the people in attendance at the
wedding to throw rice at the people who got married. And here it’s Eleanor Rigby’s job to
clean it up, to remove it, to pick it up off the floor. Next line:
Lives in a dream
So, it could be “she” lives, but we get the idea that Eleanor Rigby doesn’t live in the regular
reality. In her mind, she’s kind of somewhere else. So, a dream is generally what happens in
the mind when we sleep. The thoughts and visuals that we get when we’re in a deep sleep.
So, Eleanor Rigby lives in a dream. It’s saying she doesn’t live in this world. She’s kind of --
her mind is somewhere else.
Waits at the window
So, waiting is to stay in one place and not move. And... “at the window”, she’s waiting at the
window. So, the window is an opening in the wall, often made of glass, and a window lets in
light or air into a building. It’s also so that you can see outside. And you can imagine Eleanor
Rigby standing at the window, just looking outside. Next line is:
Wearing the face that she keeps in the jar by the door
So, this is a very strange line and it’s not a literal line. A jar is a container, usually made of
glass, and you store things in it. It could be, for instance, a jar of jam or you can preserve
food inside of a jar. But here we have this image of a glass jar being kept by the door. It’s not
a real jar, but we get the sense that Eleanor Rigby is putting on an expression. And when it
says “wearing the face”, that means wearing an expression.
So, your face is generally the part of your head with your eyes and nose and mouth, but in
this case it means an expression. So, she puts on an expression that is ready for her
whenever she needs it. An expression that you could just put on, or take from a jar, gives the
idea of a fake expression, kind of artificial; not real or genuine. And because it’s by the door,
or next to or near where people would enter or exit the building, she can easily access this
expression and put it on whenever she’s near others. It gives the idea of her being sort of
fake or not genuine. And the next line asks:
Who is it for?
Who is this expression for? Is it for other people? Is it for her? Why is she putting on this sort
of artificial or fake expression? And now we get to the chorus where it says:
CHORUS:
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
So, where do they all come from? This isn’t asking literally where people come from. Like, he
doesn’t want to know if people come from London or from New York or from Rome. It’s very
figurative. He just means, how has our society created so many lonely people? Where do we
get all of these lonely people from?
And, where do they all belong? It’s the idea of belonging. To belong means to feel at home,
to feel at peace, to have a sense of purpose. If you belong somewhere you fit in and you feel
comfortable, and you feel part of something. He’s asking, where do all these lonely people
belong? What’s their purpose in this life? In our society?
In verse two we hear:
VERSE TWO:
Father McKenzie
“Father” meaning, not as in your dad, not your biological dad, but father is a word used for a
priest -- someone who is a leader in the church, in this case the Catholic Church. So, Father
McKenzie:
Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
A sermon is a talk or a speech given during a church service. Usually to teach some kind of
moral lesson or to learn about Jesus, or the Bible. But, Father McKenzie is here writing a
sermon that no one will hear, that no one will be able to listen to. Why? Because:
No one comes near
It means no one is listening. It gives the idea that the church is maybe empty, or there are
very few people listening to the sermons that Father McKenzie writes.
Look at him working
Here, once again, we have the imperative: look at. It’s directing our attention, and we’re
looking at him working. Working is in the continuous or the progressive tense with -ing at the
end, “working”. It shows an action in progress. And, what is he doing with his work? He’s:
Darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there
Darning his socks. So, to darn means to fix or repair or to mend holes. So, socks are a piece
of clothing, an article of clothing that you wear on your feet. And you can imagine his socks
with holes in them. So, he’s fixing them, at night, with no one else there. (*to darn is not a
common verb in English).
We once again get the sense of being alone. The loneliness of this profession, of being a
priest.
What does he care?
Meaning, why is this important? The implication here is that, of course, he could use his time
for something else, something more purposeful. And then we get to the chorus again, and
then to the third and final verse, where we hear “Eleanor Rigby” again. This time:
Eleanor Rigby, died in the church and was buried along with her name
Died. So, this is the past tense of the verb die. To die means to stop living. When you reach
the end of your life, you die. So, Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with
her name. “Was buried” is the passive voice of the verb “to bury”, and it means to be put
under ground. When people die, others often dig holes in the ground and then put the dead
body inside this hole, and then they fill the hole with dirt and earth again, and this whole
process is called burying someone.
So, Eleanor Rigby was buried and it says “along with her name”. So, of course, her name
wasn’t literally buried, but it means that her name was forgotten. When her body is gone also
people will forget her name. And that’s what it says next:
Nobody came
This means nobody came to her funeral. So, when Father McKenzie was burying Eleanor
Rigby, no one was there at her funeral, no one came to this burial ceremony, except for
Father McKenzie, he’s the only one. The next line says:
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
To wipe is a verb which means to brush off or to clean. So, he’s cleaning his hands because
he just dug a hole, he just buried Eleanor Rigby. So, he’s wiping his hands off to clean them
-- getting the dirt off of them. Right? Cleaning his hands. It says:
No one was saved
Here we have the idea of salvation -- saving the souls of people, which is really the job of a
priest or a minister -- Father McKenzie’s job. And the writer of this song, Paul McCartney
sees this as sort of a failure, no one was saved. And the song ends with the chorus again.
INTERPRETATION:
So, this song is really kind of a sad song. Of course, we have the topic of loneliness. But, it’s
also kind of a tragic song. Definitely, the way that Paul McCartney sees the world full of lonely people is not a very happy image. But, what’s interesting is that we never hear from
Eleanor Rigby herself and we never hear from Father McKenzie. We don’t actually know if
they’re lonely people. They’re simply working in the church, doing their jobs, doing their daily
tasks. And we don’t actually know if they’re really, truly lonely or not. Certainly it’s the writers
perception that they are, but it could just be that the writer, or Paul McCartney, is quite lonely
and he’s seeing loneliness in other people or in every other person that he sees. That’s one
interpretation. Of course, there are always many ways to interpret songs.
Another way to interpret this song or look at it is certainly as a religious critique. The people
that we do hear about, in this case, Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie, they’re both
religious people, they both work in a church, and it’s certainly a critique on the usefulness of
their activities; the usefulness of what they do. It certainly seems like the work that Eleanor
Rigby does in the church doesn’t seem to have value for the writer. It seems to be rather
useless. Also, the work that Father McKenzie does: writing his sermons, fixing his socks,
working at night. To the writer this seems to be a very lonely job and one that doesn’t have a
lot of value. So, it’s kind of a critique of religion in society. At least, those are two possible
interpretations of which there are probably many.
OUTRO:
So, I would like to invite you to listen to the song now, and hopefully after listening to this
audio the real song makes a lot of sense and you can look at it in a different way. I hope it’s
been helpful. Thank you and I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.
-Kiah
