| Josh Ritter – Harrisburg Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I'm glad you all are taking a historical view of these lyrics, but I'm afraid you are going a little too far. Think a little closer to home - the Industrial Revolution, to be precise. This was a period in history that rocked the world like no other, displacing thousands upon thousands of people and shaking the very foundations of Western Civilization. In particular, the railroad revolutionized transportation - especially in the sprawling United States. "Harrisburg" is the story of Romero, an Italian immigrant, possibly second generation. Even in three verses he is subtly characterized - he's a bit of a rebel, though in the beginning he still respects his Catholic religion and heritage. He was married in "Our Lady of Immaculate Dawn" though he "could have got married in the revival man's tent." His bride, obviously, may have preferred being married in that tent - she was most likely a Protestant. But the fact that they were married in a Catholic service is an indicator of his dominant, alpha male personality. This, along with other easily imagined incidents, sowed the seeds of strife in the young couple's life, and eventually bore fruit. Romero, always looking for something more, abandoned his family and his tradition, symbolized by leaving a "rose for the Virgin". Where did he go? Not to Harrisburg, the most industrialized city in the northeastern United States, but West with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Like many Italian immigrants of the time, he was most likely from the rural southern areas of the country - poor, eager for opportunities to make his way in a new land. Life building the tracks was not enough for Romero. Perhaps his co-workers, Irish Catholic immigrants, reminded him of the heritage he had rejected. Like the tracks themselves, Romero "kept going", drifting from one place and job to the next. He may have gone a little wild, or become a little lonely ("wolves that he ran with", "sang sad miseries to the moon"). As he fell farther and farther away from his religion, symbolized by the rose that "withered and wilted", Romero may have "sank into a dream" induced by alcohol. But most tragically, he stopped believing. He no longer believed he could "make" Heaven because he didn't believe in Heaven or Hell but rather was left with only "a hole in between" - the void that accompanies loss of faith. He vacillates between blaming God, calling him a "drunkard for pain" and blaming himself ("man is the root of all evil"). Finally, he concludes that "the Garden of Eden was burned to make way for a train." This is a difficult phrase to decode without a further look into the chorus. "If evil exists, it's a pair of train tracks," Romero says. It's easy to see that he faults industrialization, represented by the rails, with most of the problems that have befallen him. They tempted him, along with many others, West and away from his family, his foundation, and his values. They also drew him into the previously unexplored lands of doubt. "If" evil exists - Romero begins to question the basic facts he's believed all his life. The Garden of Eden was the only place where man walked with God - the only time when the human and divine had no need of a priest or intercessor to commune. In a cynical statement, Romero caustically proposes that what destroyed the relationship between God and Man was the evils of this world - the "train" the Devil is a part of. |
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