Paradise ‘Paradise’ is one of Springsteen’s darker, haunting melodies about Terrorism/loss/Suicide/The afterlife from ‘The Rising’ album released one year after 9/11. For years following the attack America stood still in mourning and a depressive state had set in. This song is truly moving on many different levels. The eerie tone/sound that lingers throughout the song combined with Springsteen’s incisive ability to sing with an undertone of detachment accentuates the haunting aspect of this song. The creepy tone lingers. ‘Paradise’ reveals a darker side to Springsteen, showcasing perhaps his darkest thoughts and deepest fears. The first stanza describes a female suicide bomber in a crowded marketplace about to commit a terrorist act "Plastics, wire and your kiss”. The woman believes that committing this brutal act will give her the rites to “Paradise”, even though it means leaving her young child behind and killing innocent civilians. It’s evident that Religion is …show more content…
Dreams often reflect our deepest desires and darkest thoughts. This death could be related to the events of 9/11. The “Virginia Hills” could be a direct reference to the American Airlines flight 77 that crashed into The Pentagon near Virginia. The woman’s sadness and grief is heart-breaking. She longs to be reunited with her departed lover. She visualizes touching his hair and gently brushing his cheek. Among the pain and internal suffering she fails to recognize what life on earth has to offer. The hills of Virginia are a representation of change, the beauty and wonders of planet earth, altering from a vivacious green to a dull brown but she neglects this evident vitality presented right before her very eyes. “I wait for Paradise, and I wait for Paradise”. It offers her the prospect of being with her true love once again where the woman will find a medicinal cure for her earthly pain. Dark thoughts set
In her essay “Nine Days of Ruth,” Angela Morales eloquently yet humorously narrates the final nine days of her grandmother’s life. Initially, Morales reminisces about the day her grandmother Ruth passed away projecting a gothic, murky and vacant atmosphere. However, Morales shifts from a leaden tone to a more gratifying voice revealing her grandmother’s life trajectory: betrayal, death, and struggles. The author ends with a eulogy expressing to her grandmother that while other will bury with a different image or perspective in mind, she will bury her as a luminary. Make-believe, fantasy, and imagination play an important role in the essay because it conveys the beauty of death.
In Laurie Ann Guerrero’s poem “Morning Praise Of Nightmares, One,” the speaker’s use of the poetic elements set a serious tone, use of a paradoxical title, and ambiguous language, yet attention to detail leads you to assess the poem as an interpretation of a vivid dream. The speaker’s image of the human body, between life's lushness, and death’s natural process, highlights a human behavior.
If you had to make a choice with nothing to choose from, how could you choose? Would your choice be the right decision since their is no guideline to your future? Listening to music can relieve stress and even a provide a guideline to the right choices. In the book The Outsiders written by S.E. Hinton, the Curtis brothers and other greasers have difficult choices they encounter that relate their life to the song "Give Me Back My Hometown" by Eric Church. The song relates to the actions of the boys, the dreams the greasers have of becoming better, and the need to own the streets in their area.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most important American poets of the 1800s. Dickinson, who was known to be quite the recluse, lived and died in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, spending the majority of her days alone in her room writing poetry. What few friends she did have would testify that Dickinson was a rather introverted and melancholy person, which shows in a number of her poems where regular themes include death and mortality. One such poem that exemplifies her “dark side” is, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. In this piece, Dickinson tells the story of a soul’s transition into the afterlife showing that time and death have outright power over our lives and can make what was once significant become meaningless.
Springsteen urged the firefighter to “come on up for the rising” into the afterlife, and at the same time invited the country to rise up, unify, and transcend the tragedy of 9/11. Unlike other songs that came out after 9/11 which called for revenge, he gave the depressed and mourning country a sense of hope, that we can comeback from this catastrophe if we rise up together and rebuild, rather than rising up to take “an eye for an eye” (Empty
The song “Atlantic City” by Bruce Springsteen tells the story of a couple, their love and how it has fallen apart as well as their debts. The man in the relationship is trying to get either his girlfriend or wife a new, better life. He wants to start over and due things the right way, having a strong relationship, a steady job and no debts. He wants to be able to buy her expensive things and be able to pay the bills and rediscover their love for one another ‘were going out where the sands turning to gold”. He thinks their love has died but can come back, “how everything dies baby that’s a fact/but maybe everything that dies someday comes back” which also connects to him self to a new task, that he may not survive while in “Atlantic City”.
Throughout this course I have learned that Bruce’s songs have a deeper meaning than the tempo, instruments and lyrics of the song present. This is proven again with the songs Nebraska, Born in the USA, Ghost of Tom Joad, and Streets of Philadelphia. These songs can almost be looked at spiritually and emotionally for those who feel they don’t fit in with society. As Chet Flippo says about Bruce’s songs in his interview “a fundamentalist acceptance of life and its troubles, along with the faith that true belief will bring a better way.”
No matter how many times you ask somebody to give you an interpretation of what the song Stairway to Heaven really perseveres, you will get a different answer every time. The song Stairway to Heaven was written by Led Zeppelin in 1971. Throughout all these years, still every time you ask an individual about their interpretation to the song, they will respond differently. The reason being because the songs represents many different values throughout it, but it is your choice to determine about how you choose to have an outlook on it.
In “Annabel Lee”, Edgar Allan Poe, like in many of his stories, describes the death of a beautiful woman. He describes for the reader that the love of him and Annabel Lee was so strong, that the angels in Heaven envied them and this was the cause of her death. It is disputed that the woman named Annabel Lee in this poem, is in real life, Edgar Allen Poe’s wife, Virginia. “Annabel Lee” is a perfect example of how Edgar Allen Poe used romance to illustrate the essence of death. He describes how the love that he had for her was so strong and it ended up causing envy in the angels and they in return took her away from him. The poem illustrates the misery that can be
Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both
Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.
This captures the frustration and the regret of having to deal with the situation in a Jeckle and Hyde sort of way, in that person one is very calm and although frustrated manages to turn to religion for help whereas in the second part of the poem they rebel against religion and it’s teachings and have corrupt thoughts and feelings.
The third line, "Terror, the Human Form Divine," represents the purest feeling of humanity. People want to believe in God, but no matter how much they want to believe the terror resides in their soul they are wrong. Satan feeds off of this terror to make people doubt Heaven and come towards Hell. Line four, "And Secrecy, the Human Dress," represents how well humans hide these feelings of doubt and terror.
In times of war it is quite common for people to start questioning their values and their actions and be unsure of the path they are taking. This is common because to protect our values we often are told that we have to take actions that conflict with those values. One example would be how to protect our liberties we must sometimes restrain those liberties during treacherous times. However, the ultimate question is whether or not going against the very values we stand for is a hypocritical and wrongful action plan. Bruce Springsteen approaches this very issue in his song “Devils & Dust”, from the CD with the same title, and he subtly criticizes how the United States is betraying
Mary Oliver’s poem, “Sleeping in the Forest,” presents a peaceful and vivid representation of death and its relationship with nature. As the poem begins, the reader is introduced to the earth welcoming the speaker back into the realm of nature. Man was created from the dust of the earth and when we die, our bodies return to the dust. However, this poem presents a more beautiful image of what death is composed of. Death is often portrayed as being frightening and disturbing. When individuals are presented with the thought of death, they often push this thought away out of fear and ignorance. Everyone will die someday whether we ignore the thought of death or not. However, Oliver creates a relaxing and welcoming image for the reader on what death (ideally) is. Obviously, since Oliver is still alive, she doesn’t know what death feels like. However, the way she describes death, I hope that it feels like sleeping in a forest; full of stars and enchantment.