Analyse af Bruce Springsteens 'The Promised Land'

The song “The Promised Land” is by Bruce Springsteen and was wroten in 1978. At the beginning of the song, we get a sense about where the plot takes place; out on a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert.

In the first stanza, we get a view on how the normal life for an American can be, and there isn’t much thinking through that the life they live could’ve been different. At this moment life is unchanged. Live is just very happy and simple. In the refrain, we get to know that the man wants things to change drastically and have changed. The sentence “Mister, I ain't a boy, no I'm a man” is where you can put the construction on that things has changed but he still wants to fight back. He isn’t the boy that just sit around and let life go by anymore but instead he’s a man and has done or wants to do something about it. That’s why he still believes in a promised land. In the second stanza, things are about to turn. He is beginning to think that both he and the world he is living in isn’t like it used to be. He can feel that he doesn’t want to stay like this forever. He feels different, weak and painful. In the last stanza, he gives up leaves almost everything behind. He goes “straight into the storms” and it’s going to “be a twister to blow everything down”. He has to change everything about himself because the promise has been broken and he can’t return to his old self. The dreams and the lies. Everything has been taking away from him. That’s why he is talking about this storm that can blow everything away like it was nothing. He lost.