Song Analysis

       In the song “The River,” Bruce Springsteen uses the symbols and archetypes of river, swimming, and youth to express the theme of life’s disappointments. According to Stevens, “the river is also an obstacle to migration” (11). At first swimming in the river was a “feeling [of being] at home” but through life’s disappointments swimming turned into a “horror of being overwhelmed” (Stevens 421). A child is a symbol of youth: “The child points to the future and carries within itself the seeds of its own maturity and completion” (Stevens 240).

Picture For Aliens

Ariadne's Clue

" Like all psychobiological capacities, symbol formation has an adaptive function: it promotes our grasp on reality. It enables us not just to adapt passively to reality but to master it, to adjust reality to our needs" 
(Stevens 16).

"All our archetypal patterns of thought, feelings, symbolism, and behavior are present and expressed in us because of the contribution they made to the fitness of past generations" (Stevens 28).

"What is inherited is not archetypal image of snake per se, but an archetypal predisposition to perceive danger in a configuration of snakelike characteristics---something long, sinuous, and slithery, with fangs, and forked and flicking tongue" (Stevens 31).


"That a symbol signifies, in Jung's phrase, 'something more and other than itself which eludes our present knowledge' is what endows it with fascination and power" (Stevens 13).

Being Watched

            My younger brother and I always joke around about our similar appearances and even call ourselves twins. We say that we have a sixth sense, and we can tell what the other one is thinking. One night I went to sleep not knowing if I would dream or not, but I did end up dreaming that I was at school. In my dream I was talking to my friend, I kept getting this sensation that someone behind me was staring at me, and the person would not go away. I decided to turn around in my dream and as I also turned around in my bed to face my door, I woke up. There was my brother staring at me. He had silently opened the door, walked in, and had not said a thing.