The past is memory, memory is a ghost and also a dream, the dream is a lie, and yet we still cannot stop ourselves from trying. “The River” isn’t a happy song, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility of redemption in some unforeseen future.
Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” isn’t a happy song. The music, complete with a wailing harmonica, is more suited to a funeral dirge, slow, stately, and forever tinged with melancholy. The closing track of the second side of a four side, double album released in 1980, Springsteen has matured as a songwriter since his breakthrough albums and feels freer to take a more nuanced, softer approach. The opening lines tell almost the entire story. If not the specifics of the events, but the generalization of the town the speaker calls home. We can tell from four short lines that there is little hope in this world. “I come from down in the valley, Where, mister, when you’re young, They bring you up to do Like your daddy done.” After setting the stage, speaker begins to tell his own story, revealing that he met his love in high school and they’d escape the dullness of their existence by driving “out of this valley Down to wear the fields were green.” Apparently, the only way to get out of this town is to go down, and so the end of the first verse sets up duality that will be revisited throughout the song. They live “down in the valley,” but somehow go “down” to get out of the valley.
The first repetition of the chorus offers a glimmer of hope, though the music and the tone of Springsteen’s voice suggest a lot more regret and pain promise for the future. Down is where the river is like everything else, and “And into the river we’d dive, Oh, down to the river we’d ride.” Not surprisingly, the start of the next verse lands like a crushing weight on the chest, and all the potential promise of greener days is gone in a single line: Then I got Mary pregnant. If there was any doubt about how bleak this turn of events truly was, the speaker continues:
Then I got Mary pregnant
And, man, that was all she wrote
For my nineteenth birthday
I got a union card and a wedding coat
The purely passive language suggests the speaker had no agency in these life changing circumstances. In his world, a wedding follows an unexpected pregnancy the same way he was brought up to do what his “daddy done,” a serpent eating its tail that ultimately defines the structure of the song, as if the town feeds upon itself perpetually. Choice and freedom – as suggested by driving out of the valley – are completely removed from the equation. He can only go “down to the courthouse,” once again suggesting that everything in this town is down from somewhere, where the “judge put it all to rest” as if the couple were being issued a jail sentence. The day is defined exclusively in terms of what didn’t happen, but which should have happened if the occasion had been happier. “No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle, No flowers, no wedding dress.” He gets a “wedding coat,” but for some reason there is no “wedding dress,” another odd juxtaposition of language like the use of “down” that doesn’t quite make logical sense. The newlyweds do, however, seek the same escape as earlier, going “down to the river” to celebrate their marriage even as we (and they) know things will never be the same again.
After the wedding, the speaker turns to more provincial matters with no more luck or optimism. He gets a job “working construction For the Johnstown company,” but “lately, there ain’t been much work, On account of the economy.” The poor economic conditions, however, are merely a backdrop to the emotional toil of their increasingly strained relationship when “all those things that seem so important, Well, mister, they vanished right into the air.” From there, the song finally moves into its lasting theme: Memory and its impact on us depending on the stage and context of our lives. The entire composition so far has largely taken place in a world of black and white, but the stage was set in the first verse to a time that was greener and better. This stage finally intrudes on the speaker, a ghost from his past, and dominates the rest of the song. Repeating the established pattern of down and denial, the speaker now denies he has memories of a better time at all. He acts “like he don’t remember And Mary acts like she don’t care.” Merely pretending and denying, however, cannot suppress the truth or prevent the image of going down to somewhere better from resurfacing:
…I remember us riding in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night, on them banks, I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
In a more uplifting story, these memories would serve a healthy function. The love between a husband and wife is to a large extent built on shared memories and experiences. As a couple ages, they grow together because so much of the content of their minds is inextricably intertwined. To the speaker, however, these memories have been transformed into ghosts, haunting his waking moments. “Now those memories come back to haunt me They haunt me like a curse.” They also prompt a question at the core of what makes us human, in what is perhaps one of Springsteen’s best single lines. “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?” Like a serpent eating its tail, to use the line from earlier, the song comes full circle. In high school, the speaker and his lover escaped to the reservoir in what was a dream of a better life, where the fields were green. These better days are simply memories now, transformed by years of disappointment into ghosts he cannot escape, but the underlying dream – peace and happiness with his lover – remains the same, only now he knows it will never come true and therefore the dream itself was a lie. Knowing this, however, doesn’t prevent him from attempting to relive it, and so the song enters the final verse with “worse” playing double duty in any echo from earlier. Down / down, wedding coat / wedding dress is now a hinge simply on “worse.” “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true or is it something worse?” to “Is it something worse that sends me down to the river Though I know the river is dry?”
The river, here, begins to represent something more than dreams and memories. It holds the promise of redemption. The idea that he and his lover can be cleansed and reborn as they were in high school, even though the speaker knows the river and all it represents is long gone. The past is memory, memory is a ghost and also a dream, the dream is a lie, and yet we still cannot stop ourselves from trying. We can imagine the speaker sitting on those now parched banks where only dead weeds linger, and imagining what the world was like before the marriage and their child, as if he were watching a home movie playing in worn, golden tones. Ironically, although the song doesn’t come out and say it directly, one gets the sense that his vision of the past is superior to when he was actually living it. In the first verse, the fields are merely green and the river was a place to take a swim on a hot summer night. A positive thing, but also a far cry from his memory of the drive, her body “tan and wet,” and him “holding her close just to feel each breath she’d take,” much less that he would return here for the rest of this life and, indeed, those moments would be the high point of his entire existence.
This should not be surprising. We often do not realize what we have until it’s gone, or the importance of what we are experiencing until years later. The pinnacle is frequently recognized only on the downward slope on the other side. We can hope the slope bends upwards again, but never know for sure. Thus, the speaker returns to this spot physically as well mentally, but cannot say precisely why or whether or not that is a good thing. The listener is left with the impression that the speaker has no hope for the future, that his dream of redemption is for naught because the river has run dry. The song, however, doesn’t say that for sure. The same way we can understand that he couldn’t have known trips to the river in high school would be the best days of his life or what would soon come, neither we nor he can know what the future holds for him, his love, and his child. Do they still bring people up to do like their “daddy done” or have times changed? This is doubly true when, however unsuccessfully, he keeps trying. Redemption might well remain out of reach for him, but he can almost see it in some other valley where the fields are greener. It is this desire to keep trying that Springsteen captures here and in other songs, and it is one of the things that most defines us as human: Our ability to defy fate itself, even if we don’t succeed.
Three more interesting points. “The River” is frequently seen as a semi-autobiographical song because Springsteen’s sister got pregnant out of wedlock at a young age and it is at least partially her story. Mary, of course, is a name that features prominently in several Springsteen songs, “Thunder Road” being the most famous and sharing some of the same themes. “Mary’s Place” is a more recent song, where Mary is dead and gone but her promise remains. In Springsteen’s world, Mary seems to be associated with redemption in general. The word “down” appears twice in the first and second verse, once in the bridge, and twice in the chorus, but it’s almost mysteriously absent from the third verse. Four years later, Springsteen would write “I’m Going Down” as a song on its own.
THE RIVER
I come from down in the valley
Where, mister, when you’re young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done
Me and Mary we met in high school
When she was just seventeen
We drive out of this valley
Down to where the fields were green
We’d go down to the river
And into the river we’d dive
Oh, down to the river we’d ride
Then I got Mary pregnant
And man, that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday
I got a union card and a wedding coat
We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle
No flowers, no wedding dress
That night we went down to the river
And into the river we’d dive
Oh, down to the river we did ride
Yeah, yeah
I got a job working construction
For the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain’t been much work
On account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don’t remember
Mary acts like she don’t care
But I remember us riding in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet, down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse
That sends me down to the river
Though I know the river is dry
That sends me down to the river tonight
Down to the river
My baby and I
Oh, down to the river we ride-ide
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 