Theme Of Senseless Crime In Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska

Senseless Crime in Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” Through the use of first-person narrative, Bruce Springsteen’s song “Nebraska” recounts the crimes of a murderer leading up to his impending execution. Inspired by the murders of Charles Weather and Caril Anne Fugate (Anonymous), Springsteen positions himself as Charles Weather and his audience as the auditors of the song, allowing them to garner an insight into the perspective of the criminal. The song itself takes on the lyric form of a subgenre of poetry known as the dramatic monologue. Such poems “tend to offer us a window into an entire, complex psychology” (Mays 463). However, this song seems to suggest there is no complex reasoning behind the speaker’s motives due to an ambiguous closing line …show more content…
By establishing infrequent instances of rhyme in the song, the quality of a sing-songy poem which pulls in its readers is avoided. Instead, the lack of rhyme creates a lack of feeling and emotion within the recounting of the speaker’s murders. An emotional detachment from these murders is also suggested when the speaker states, “I can’t say that I’m sorry for the things/ that we done/ At least for a little while, sir, me and/ her we had some fun” (9-12). These lines indicate that the speaker feels no remorse for his actions, and urges the auditor to accept that the speaker believes his crimes to have been “fun.” In addition, both the speaker and auditor are fully aware of the impending execution awaiting the speaker. The speaker already knows he is going to die, yet his tone remains calm throughout his narrative, further showing an emotional disconnect from his actions. With a lack of emotion embedded in this monologue, the implication of a senseless crime begins to develop within the realm of possibility of the