He is generally allied with the Beats, and while he was close friends with the true Beats like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, his writing never fit with the Beatnik style. His first couple of novels, Junkie (or Junky) and Queer, were written in a style reminiscent of hard-boiled detective novels. As he became more comfortable with expressing himself through writing, his "routines" were assembled into his most famous work, Naked Lunch , published in 1959. His "cut-up" technique, developed subsequently with fellow inventor-poet Brion Gysin, took over his literary style to produce a number of lesser-known works. With the publication in 1981 of the trilogy starting with Cities of the Red Night he embarked on a further development of style aimed at achieving his expressed intent to "write the great American novel".
Such a vast amount could be written about Burroughs' life and legacy; perhaps "lives and legacies" would be more appropriate. His influences are uncountably and immeasurably wide-reaching; it has been argued that without his tape cut-ups, we'd not have thought of sampling and therefore we'd never have had techno. Equally, without his transgressive, libertarian, shocking subject matter, we may never have had punk or industrial. In his later life he was championed and courted by these fringe elements of society and art.
Kill The Badger!
William S. Burroughs Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Where they later made the atom bomb and couldn't wait to drop it on
The Yellow Peril,
The boys are sitting on logs and rocks, eating some sort of food.
There is a stream at the end of a slope.
The counselor was a Southerner with a politician's look about him.
He told us stories by the campfire,
Culled from the racist garbage of the
Suddenly, a badger erupts among the boys – don't know why he did it,
Just playful, friendly and inexperienced like the Aztec Indians
Who brought fruit down to the Spanish and got their hands cut off.
So the counselor rushes for his saddlebag and gets out his 1911 Colt .
45 auto and starts blasting at the
Badger, missing it with every shot at six feet.
Finally he puts his gun three
Inches from the badger's side and shoots.
This time the badger rolls down the slope into the stream.
I can see the stricken animal,
The sad shrinking face, rolling down the slope, bleeding, dying.
You see an animal, you kill it, don't you?
It might have bitten one of the boys."
The badger just wanted to romp and play, and he gets shot with a .
45 government issue.
Contact that.
Identify with that.
Feel that.
And ask yourself, whose life is worth more?
The badger, or this evil piece of white shit?
The lyrics to William S. Burroughs's song 'Kill The Badger!' discuss a story that takes place at Los Alamos Ranch School, which later became a location for the development of the atom bomb. Burroughs describes a group of boys sitting around a campfire, being told racist stories by a counselor who has a politician's look about him. Suddenly, a badger arrives and starts playing with the boys. The counselor doesn't know why the badger is there but decides to kill it, grabbing his 1911 Colt .45 auto and shooting at it. Despite missing the badger multiple times, the counselor eventually shoots it, causing it to roll down the slope and into the stream. As the badger dies, Burroughs questions the moral dilemma of whether an animal's life is worth less than that of a human, especially a morally corrupt one like the counselor.
The song uses imagery to highlight the inhumane behavior of the counselor towards the badger, a playful and harmless creature. Burroughs suggests that the counselor's actions are representative of society's treatment of vulnerable and marginalized individuals that are deemed a threat, contributing to a broader commentary on the nature of violence and power dynamics. The lyrics encourage listeners to identify with the animal, to feel its pain and suffering, and ultimately question the morality of violent acts.
Line by Line Meaning
At Los Alamos Ranch School,
The setting is the Los Alamos Ranch School.
Where they later made the atom bomb and couldn't wait to drop it on The Yellow Peril,
The school later contributed to making the atom bomb and had an eager attitude towards using it against Asian people.
The boys are sitting on logs and rocks, eating some sort of food.
The boys are all sitting on natural materials while consuming sustenance of an unspecified kind.
There is a stream at the end of a slope.
A stream exists at one end of a hill.
The counselor was a Southerner with a politician's look about him.
The counselor was from the southern United States and appeared to have a politician's typical appearance.
He told us stories by the campfire, Culled from the racist garbage of the Insidious Sax Rohmer – East is evil, West is good.
The counselor recounted stories that had been selected from Sax Rohmer's racist works where the East is portrayed as evil, and the West as virtuous.
Suddenly, a badger erupts among the boys – don't know why he did it, Just playful, friendly and inexperienced like the Aztec Indians Who brought fruit down to the Spanish and got their hands cut off.
A playful and friendly badger suddenly appears among the boys, similar to the Aztecs, who offered fruit to the Spanish but had their hands severed.
So the counselor rushes for his saddlebag and gets out his 1911 Colt .45 auto and starts blasting at the Badger, missing it with every shot at six feet.
The counselor quickly retrieves his 1911 Colt .45 handgun from his saddlebag and begins firing at the badger unsuccessfully from a distance of six feet.
Finally he puts his gun three Inches from the badger's side and shoots.
Finally, the counselor moves the handgun to be three inches away from the badger's body and fires.
This time the badger rolls down the slope into the stream.
The badger is hit by the bullet and then rolls down the hill into the stream.
I can see the stricken animal, The sad shrinking face, rolling down the slope, bleeding, dying.
The singer visualizes the wounded animal with a pained and diminishing expression tumbling down the hill, while bleeding until its eventual death.
You see an animal, you kill it, don't you? It might have bitten one of the boys.
The counselor believed that when an animal is encountered, one should immediately kill it out of fear of the creature biting the boys.
The badger just wanted to romp and play, and he gets shot with a .45 government issue. Contact that. Identify with that. Feel that.
The badger was playfully interacting with the boys and got killed by a powerful weapon. The lyrics encourage empathy for the animal and what it went through.
And ask yourself, whose life is worth more? The badger, or this evil piece of white shit?
The lyrics invoke the question of whose existence holds more value, the badger's or the racist counselor's who killed it with a gun.
Writer(s): William S. Burroughs, Buryl Red
Contributed by Evelyn A. Suggest a correction in the comments below.