"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
The similarities in situation between the Donner Party and the colonial Pilgrims is both appalling, frightening, and incomplete.
In both cases, you'll find one: a fairly large group of ill-prepared greenhorns, pitting themselves against nature and each other, two: an insufficient willingness to endure the very real hardships of frontiering, and three: coincidental misfortune at every turn. Number three: coincidental misfortune at EVERY TURN.
The disasters of both camps were initially brought about by departure delay-inducing inertia, which caused our heroes to begin their journeys at absolutely retarded times weather-wise.
If fantasy is the refuge of the frightened man, and a castle in the air is safe harbor for a foolish few, just imagine:
Living in a hut buried twelve feet below the snow, where the sight and smell of the scattered carcasses of loved ones at your feet, is...the lay of the land. Just another day.
I would like to propose that cannibalism was indeed rampant among America's earliest settlers: the Pilgrims.
Voice: HUH?
The Pilgrims. For what does "settler" imply, if not the willingness to settle? The willingness to settle for a meal of human flesh if my thoughts on the subject are to believed.
In conclusion, spread the word of this: Look to the night sky and hark back to your forefathers' shortcomings, [chuckle] and your own, as you cut your meat and lay the groundwork for a New Tomorrow.
In both cases, you'll find one: a fairly large group of ill-prepared greenhorns, pitting themselves against nature and each other, two: an insufficient willingness to endure the very real hardships of frontiering, and three: coincidental misfortune at every turn. Number three: coincidental misfortune at EVERY TURN.
The disasters of both camps were initially brought about by departure delay-inducing inertia, which caused our heroes to begin their journeys at absolutely retarded times weather-wise.
If fantasy is the refuge of the frightened man, and a castle in the air is safe harbor for a foolish few, just imagine:
Living in a hut buried twelve feet below the snow, where the sight and smell of the scattered carcasses of loved ones at your feet, is...the lay of the land. Just another day.
I would like to propose that cannibalism was indeed rampant among America's earliest settlers: the Pilgrims.
Voice: HUH?
The Pilgrims. For what does "settler" imply, if not the willingness to settle? The willingness to settle for a meal of human flesh if my thoughts on the subject are to believed.
In conclusion, spread the word of this: Look to the night sky and hark back to your forefathers' shortcomings, [chuckle] and your own, as you cut your meat and lay the groundwork for a New Tomorrow.
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This song is obviously about the Donner Party, which was a group of people who were traveling across the U.S. in the 1800s (I think), had some "technical difficulties", and ate each other, for they had no other food than the bodies of people who had died earlier.