The Meaning of "Vindicated" The speaker of "Vindicated" by Dashboard Confessional is the teenager in all of us, and this understanding is vital to understanding the meaning of the song. The contradictory lines (8-13) and general feeling of confusion help us better understand what we felt during our teenage years. Perplexed and unsure of ourselves, we may not really know where the path forward lies. But whatever it is, we are right, simply because we don't want to be wrong. In the first stanza we are captivated by hope, because it "hangs on a string" before us, not quite within our reach, because although we are aware of it, we do not really understand what it is. what does it mean to have hope (1). We then speak of “slow rotation redemption” (2). Again, this is because we do not fully appreciate redemption. We can see it before us, in many different lights, thus spinning, but we don't really understand what makes redemption what it is. Because we do not understand the concepts of hope and redemption, they “chain” us and “hypnotize” us (5, 6). We spend a lot of time in our youth...