Central Heating Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quotes

This line uses the metaphor of central heating to talk about a question that most humans have thought about, at one point or another: "What exactly is making my ticker tick, anyhow?" In the middle of the massive death and tragedy of World War I, the idea of life would, indeed, seem arbitrary. Even though it would be easy to attribute human life to an electromagnet, as if we were some complicated machine, we know—and we know our speaker knows—that it's not that easy. There's some sarcasm in this metaphor so watch out—our speaker may be in love, but he's not all mushy.

This line gives us a less than optimistic view of love, and, perhaps, life. Life is nothing and love is nothing, which makes it not so big a deal that the speaker's love may be taking him in the wrong direction. Yet, we can't help but think that this leap to thinking the world is nothing is a defense mechanism—a barrier against the depression and distress of this young man, what with his world being barraged by bombs and his heart barraged by uncertainty in love.

Again, we get a less-than-optimistic view of life, consciousness, and existence. Someone is striking up a spark, as if they were trying to start an engine, but they just let that spark die down without a care a little while later. It's as if the speaker thinks lives just flicker on and off as determined by some arbitrary "they." As despairing as this viewpoint is, this metaphor does have a positive view—at least we are the spark, and not the darkness. Yay?