One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong

Leonard Cohen's 'One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong' is a haunting exploration of unrequited love and the emotional turmoil it brings. The song is filled with vivid imagery and metaphors that convey the narrator's deep sense of longing and despair. The opening lines, where the narrator lights a thin green candle to make the object of his affection jealous, only to attract mosquitos, sets the tone for the futility and pain that permeates the song. This act of lighting a candle symbolizes a desperate attempt to gain attention, but it backfires, leading to more discomfort and suffering.

The song continues with the narrator's interactions with various figures, each representing different facets of his emotional state. The doctor, who prescribes the lover's name and then deteriorates, symbolizes the narrator's realization that his love is a kind of sickness that cannot be cured. The saint who teaches that the duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule and then drowns himself, represents the destructive nature of obsessive love. These characters and their fates highlight the narrator's internal conflict and the destructive impact of his unreciprocated feelings.

In the final verse, the eskimo who shows a movie of the lover and then freezes, serves as a metaphor for the narrator's own emotional paralysis. The eskimo's inability to warm up after witnessing the lover's coldness mirrors the narrator's own struggle to move on from his unrequited love. The plea to be let into the 'blizzard of ice' at the end of the song underscores the narrator's willingness to endure any hardship just to be close to the object of his affection, despite the pain it causes. Leonard Cohen masterfully uses these metaphors and vivid imagery to convey the deep emotional anguish of unrequited love, making 'One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong' a poignant and powerful piece.