o a fit of rage. At the funeral, while speaking to Liz, he gets all worked up and “suddenly, [he’s] raging and [he] [doesn’t] know how to calm down” (244). The word “cross” describes Rob quite well because he always seems to find someone to be angry with. Rob’s distress is clearly caused by loneliness and unhappiness with the way his life has turned out.Rob clearly feels he is battling life alone. He feels he has no one to express his feelings to because no one understands him:I can’t speak to Laura because she lives with somebody else and she calls from phone boxes and she pretends she doesn’t, and I can’t speak to Liz because she knows about the money and the abortion and me seeing someone else, and I can’t speak to Barry and Dick because they are Barry and Dick, and I can’t speak to my friends because I don’t speak to my friends, and I can’t speak now because Laura’s father has died, and I just have to take it because otherwise I am a bad guy… (244-245)Rob’s loneliness is accentuated by the funeral where everything, particularly the solitariness of a coffin, relates to death. As Cliff sings, “And this loneliness won’t leave me alone, it’s such a drag to be on your own”. These lyrics sound as if they came straight out of Rob’s mouth. He cannot escape the lonesomeness he is feeling because he has no one to turn to. Rob, after years of unhappiness, is just about ready to give up on searching for contentment because “unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it’s just a drag” (4). Rob has come to the conclusion that discontent is something he just has to deal with, because no matter what he has it is never enough. The whole atmosphere of this song is one of depression, which is clearly the aura Rob gives off. Rob fears he will be lonely his whole life. “[He] saw, ...
