What does the ending of "Pink Floyd The Wall" mean?

[Mike 03]

Poll question: What does the ending of "Pink Floyd The Wall" mean?

In posing this question, it is Alan Parker's film adaptation I have in mind, because Roger Waters was so involved in it, but I totally welcome all interpretations, including interpretations of the masterpiece album itself by Pink Floyd.

[bif]

1. The world will end in 2012

[KG]

2. does it matter? it's only rock and roll!

:headbang:

[mainegreen]

3. In the end, he frees himself from his past, his hangups, and faces a new uncertain...

but ultimately better future.

[RandomThoughts]

4. It would take a long time to explain my view on it.

I started to comment on it, but it is to much to say.
But in that album you hear the voices trapped in sorrow and isolation.

One small example.

If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice.

on thin ice, dragging, the voices crying (and they can break a mind)
down into the water, then the insanity, and fear, as he tries to get out of the water.

Each brick in the wall, is his inability to break out of the shadows, back into the light, which includes isolation from other people, for the depth is isolation. and each attempt makes the wall look higher.

There is a really old two sided conflict, and I think that pleading came from, the bad worst side.
Just reading the lyrics tears the mind apart terribly.

Here is a song(christian) that is a better way out(or was for me) from behind the wall.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wciE5HViS50

I do ok now... Thank God. There are more good angels out there then bad.

[jobycom]

5. I want a happy ending, but I'm not sure I can buy it.

The wall ultimately explodes inward on him, supposedly shattered by the voices and anger of the world outside the wall. They taunt him, they hate him, they use him, they refuse to understand him. I see nothing helpful in his life, nothing which would imply that he found his way out. Throughout his life he is different, constantly fighting the urges to conform, and this, too is the result of the wall.

The wall is more than just his isolation. It is his identity, his unique persona, his individuality. The world outside the wall cannot accept this. They try to tear him apart. His marriage, his career, his music--everything tells him he must conform or he will be unhappy. They don't want him to heal, they want him to be like them.

I don't think Waters et al could have so convincingly envisioned Pink's isolation, so accurately portrayed the steps to such an asocial development, and then felt that he could suddenly be cured in the final moments of the film. I think it more likely that all the impossible pressure on him from without caused him to have a breakdown.

The wall has become his mind, and it shatters in the end. It may even be the total destruction of himself--a suicide.

Or maybe that's just the world I've seen around me, and not his world. I don't know. I remember arguing this in college shortly after the film came out, and I still don't know.

On edit: I chose other.