| Eagles – Hotel California Lyrics | 11 months ago |
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When I was listening to it recently, it dawned on me that maybe the speaker in the song is dead. He is driving through the desert, falling asleep at the wheel. Suppose he crashes and dies, but is unaware of it? He sees the lights and stops at the hotel to get some rest. He realizes “this could be heaven or this could be hell. He goes in anyway. He meets a variety of strange characters, all of whom “are prisoners here of [their] own device.” All the weird things that happen there eventually freak him out, and he goes “running toward the door.” But he can “check out any time [he] like[s], but [he] can never leave.” Then he realizes the truth. I am pretty sure that is not necessarily what the songwriters had in mind (at least consciously), but to me it is a plausible interpretation. It would make a great Twilight Zone episode! |
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| Eagles – The Last Resort Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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@[Cleverwitch:8944] Thank you so much for your kind words, mmcdonald! |
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| Joni Mitchell – Woodstock Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I find this song very interesting. Its naive hope that if enough of us join together "in song and celebration," we actually can turn the bombers into butterflies and "get ourselves back to the garden." I love the view of human beings as "golden" and "stardust." Instead of being burdened with Original Sin, we carry within us "billion year old carbon." As the Desiderata says, "You are a child of the universe," and as such "have a right to be here" and, I think, a right to be happy. | |
| Eagles – The Last Resort Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| The above was sent accidentally in the midst of proofreading. It was meant to say "thou good and faithful servant" -- not "though," and I meant to close the quotation marks around "Jesus people." There may be other mistakes as well--sorry. | |
| Eagles – The Last Resort Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Here is a modest proposal of what I understand “The Last Resort,” (double meaning, of course), to mean.It is about what we white Americans have done in our pursuit of the American Dream. Although we tend to think of the Dream as "success," that is only part of it. According to Eric Sevareid in his essay “The American Dream,” the dream is “rebirth,” “starting over,” leaving the past and the sins/mistakes of the past behind. It has its basis in Christian mythology. Called by some “The Myth of Edenic Possibilities,” the idea is that to Europeans, the New World was the new Eden, a place where people could leave their pasts behind. With the slate wiped clean, in this New Eden, America, anyone could start over–“as clean as God’s fingers” (as one of the characters in The Crucible puts it). Here “Adam” can return to Eden/Paradise, and, this time, stay away from the darned apple tree. American writers such as Cooper, Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Penn Warren, and, yes, Henley, etc.) have wrestled with this naïve idea for two hundred years. They tend to reject it because–new Eden or not–they realize it is the still the same old Adam who still carries within him whatever it is/was (original sin, human nature) that caused him to lose paradise in the first place. Our writers, and I am including Henley here, seem to believe that the first thing Adam (and Eve, of course) would do, if given a second chance at Eden, would be to build an applesauce factory–(powered, perhaps, with dirty coal!). Now to the song itself: It starts on the east coast. The reference to Rhode Island, and particularly to the “Old World Shadows,” is very interesting. “Old World shadows” have no place in the New World. The image contradicts the whole idea of America as a place to start anew. The fact that there are "Old World shadows" in Providence (which there are, by the way, or at least were the last time I was there–narrow cobbled streets, for example) reinforces the idea that the American Dream is an illusion. We carry our pasts with us. (Two good literary images of this idea are the character who carries her parents' bones in a bag on her back (Garcia Marques: 100 Years of Solitude) and the use of the name “Burden” (one character is even named Calvin Burden (the "burden" of our Puritan past) in the works of Faulkner and Penn Warren – but I digress. It is also interesting that the speaker finds it necessary to point out that “she” comes from the Providence “in Rhode Island”–not the other “Providence” (the will of God or God Himself)–a second double meaning in the song. “Her” father came, like so many others, from Europe (apparently to Providence), but “she” is not satisfied to remain there. “Her hopes and dreams” can apparently not be fulfilled in Providence, so she is heading west (the mythic direction of the American Dream) to a “place people [are] smiling.” These people rhapsodize about “the Red Man’s ways” and “how they [love] the land.” They envision a new virtual “Paradise,” and crowd in. (“She” disappears in the crowd, by the way, and we hear no more about her.) In their pursuit of “Paradise,” however, these seekers destroy it – they lay “the mountains low” while their towns grow high. Instead of staying and cleaning up their mess, however, they continue to move west, seeking yet another paradise. (One is reminded here of the Mad Tea Party!) “They” cross the desert and end in California – where they settle, “hungry for power / To light their neon way [and] / Give them things to do.” The “power” comes, of course, from electricity with all the problems associated with it (pollution, brownouts, etc.) “Power,” like “The Last Resort” and “Providence,” has a double meaning.) The speaker becomes more harsh and blunt here: “rich men...rape” the virgin land and apparently get away with it, putting up “a bunch of ugly boxes,” and the speaker is stunned and horrified to note that “Jesus! People [have actually] bought ‘em!” (Not "Jesus-People, by the way!) The next image is of the sunset – an archetype of death or an ending – “hazy” with the pollution that the hunger for “power” has produced. This is the end of the road – the end of the westward journey – there is no clean, unspoiled place left to go. “They” have reached the far edge of the continent where they stand watching the sun go down. Well, that’s not quite true. “You can leave it all behind [and] / Sail to Lahaina,” but Lahaina is not pristine anymore either. The “missionaries” took care of that “many years ago” when they “brought the White Man’s burden” and “the White Man’s reign” down on the native Hawaiians. (One interesting aspect of Lahaina that I noticed there was how much the buildings resemble those of New England whaling towns whence came those missionaries.) (At one time at least, there actually was a sign in Lahaina that read “Jesus is coming.” I don't know if it is still there.) Now the speaker makes his point: “There is no more New Frontier.” We cannot continue to trash one “paradise,” then move west in pursuit of another. At the Mad Tea Party, eventually all the teacups are dirtied. “We have got to make it here.” In other words, instead of leaving “it all behind,” we need to stay put and clean up our mess! (As Phil Collins says in “Age of Confusion,” “This is the world we live in / And these are the hands we’re given.”) The speaker’s indictment of white America comes next. The idea of Manifest Destiny was the peculiar 19th century notion that it was God’s will (the other “Providence”) that white Americans possess the continent “from sea to shining sea.” Naturally, of course, anyone who tried to stand in our way was going against the will of God and therefore deserved to be annihilated. Hence: We satisfy our endless needs [for beautiful, unspoiled land, for wealth, for a new Paradise, for a second chance] And justify our bloody deeds [Duh....does this need explication?] In the name of [Manifest] destiny And in the name of God. Then the speaker echoes an earlier section with a twist: You can see them [good “Christians”] there [in church] on Sunday morning Stand up and sing about what it’s like up there. [Not the Rockies this time] They call it Paradise, I don’t know why Call someplace paradise; kiss it goodbye. Obviously, the speaker is not suggesting that if we go to heaven, we will trash the place. He means, I think, that the earth has been given to us in trust; we are its stewards, and like those in the Bible story of the Talents, if we do not fulfill our obligation and take care of what we have been given, when the Master returns and demands of us what we have done with it, we will not hear, “Well done, though good and faithful servant.” Instead, like the third steward in the parable, because we have buried our “one talent” (under a mountain of trash and “ugly boxes”), it will be taken from us, and we will be cast out. We can “kiss” Paradise “goodbye” because we won’t be going there. For what it’s worth. |
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