I Hurt Myself Today / To See If I Still Feel

The song Hurt by Nine Inch Nails takes you through the tortured mind of a
person suffering from the crippling influence of heroin and self harm. However when
Johnny Cash covered it, less than a year prior to his death, the song took on an entirely
different sentiment. Trent Reznor himself, the writer of the song and lead singer of Nine
Inch Nails, said, Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my
girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore, in reaction to it and its accompanying
video. Johnny Cashs Hurt is a solemn song about loneliness, depression and ones
deepest regrets when looking back on their life.
Johnny Cash sings, the pain [is] / the only thing thats real, utilizing a hyperbole
to emphasize the point that one becomes numb to everything except their pain and
suffering. However in this same line the pain is a metaphor for one's memories;
everyone has looked back at low points in their liferegrets, old relationships, and other
bad memoriesand relived that pain as if the wound were still fresh. But for Cash, those
memories are the only things he has left, so he [focuses] on the pain because its the
only way he can still feel. The next line: The needle tears a hole, of course, refers to
the physical hole a heroin needle creates in the skin, but is also symbolic of the hole
drugs tear in a persons life, pushing away loved ones and creating a schism that at
some point will be too large to reconcile.
The chorus starts with a rhetorical question: What have I become? furthering
the idea of looking back on life in disappointment and summating the overall
disheartened and regretful tone of the song. The empire of dirt, is a metaphor
comparing all the material things that one may accumulate in life to dirt. Cash feels that

in the end, all his money, power and fame is worthless in relation to all that he has lost.
The repetition of I will in the lines: I will let you down / I will make you hurt,
emphasizes that regardless of who or how or what happens, this person truly believes
that they are only capable of being destructive and pushing their loved ones away. A
crown of thorns is a biblical allusion to Christ on the cross being crucified for his sins.
Symbolism is used once again in the lyrics the stains of time, which refer to
one's bad decisions and regrets. These painful memories are compared to stains in a
metaphor because like stains, the memories are unpleasant but also cannot be erased.
Furthermore, Cash feels everyone else is able to adapt and change while he is unable
to escape his own thoughts and regrets and thus remains stagnant, portrayed by the
antithesis in the lines: You are someone else / I am still right here, which emphasizes
this contrast.
But perhaps the most powerful literary device in the song is the use of a first
person point of view and with it the the repetition of the word I. I hurt, I feel, I
could, I will, etc., these all accentuate the idea of loneliness and even more so the
underlying fact that he blames himself for everything; all the pain, the numbness, the
emptiness, Cash knows he is responsible for his own suffering and that is one of the
reasons his last moments of life are full of remorse. The final morsel of symbolism is
actually in the last seconds of the video that accompanies the song. The video ends
with Cash looking down and closing his piano, ending the song and symbolically
bringing a close to his career and perhaps even his life, seeing that the song felt almost
like an obituary, especially with Cashs death a only few months later.

Johnny Cashs Hurt, gives the reader genuine insight into Cashs complex
feelings and suffering. All the pain,remorse, yearning, and what ultimately feels like a
certain readiness for the end that a 71-year-old man filled with regret might feel on his
last few breaths. And the idea that Cashs past and pain go hand in hand is perfectly
illustrated by the extended metaphor comparing the two. Cashs emotional state begs
people to understand what is truly important in life and to never let go of it in the
unstoppable passing of time, in hopes that they are not forced to suffer the same fate as
a frail old man, looking back on life in loneliness and regret.