Monday, December 23, 2019
Springsteens The Ghost of Tom Joad relationship with...
In 1995, Bruce Springsteen produced an album titled ââ¬Å"The Ghost of Tom Joadâ⬠. Its title track brings out a lot of ideas from John Steinbeckââ¬â¢s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Migrant workers, as explained in chapter twenty three of The Grapes of Wrath, used music as a main source of entertainment. They would play the harmonica, the guitar, and the fiddle, while the other workers would dance and be jolly, despite how bad the work was that day. The instrumentals of the song are harmonica and acoustic guitar. This helps to bring out both the theme of the song and the ideas from the book. The seventh line of the song is ââ¬Å"Families sleepin in their cars in the southwestâ⬠(The Ghost of Tom Joad 1995). In the book, whileâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦It was the road to ââ¬Å"paradiseâ⬠. The thirteenth line hints at Tom Joadââ¬â¢s religious parallel. It says ââ¬Å"He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bagâ⬠(The Ghost o f Tom Joad 1995). Tom Joad can be seen as a Moses-type leader. Where Moses was leading the Hebrew people to the Promised Land, Tom was leading the migrant workers to unionization and a better life. Both leaders rejected the warnings of those who had turned back once they had reached the destination. In Mosesââ¬â¢ case, it was the Hebrew spies, while Tom was being advised by fellow Okies who could not find jobs. The next line reads, ââ¬Å"Preacher lights up a butt and takes a dragâ⬠(The Ghost of Tom Joad 1995). This line symbolizes the corruption of Jim Casy. Usually when you picture a preacher, smoking a cigarette is that last thing you would imagine him doing. Jim Casy was a preacher prior to the novel. Then he began to think for himself and committed sins. When he realized what he had done he quickly resigned his position. A few lines down the lyrics read, ââ¬Å"Got a one-way ticket to the promised landâ⬠(The Ghost of Tom Joad 1995). The bankrupt sharecr oppers saw California as ââ¬Å"the promised landâ⬠. Most of them barely had enough money after selling all of their possessions to buy a car. The cars that they could afford werenââ¬â¢t even worth what they paid, and broke down many times before they reached California. By the time they finally reached California and realized that
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.