Aside from the religious themes, this sounds like something Martin Eden would wish for himself, from Ruth. I think the concept of desire, of what is lacking and what void needs to be filled, is tantamount to why Martin Eden became a writer. It was this his belief in the love that Ruth gave him that made him into a different man, and helped him rise above the "badlands". Unfortunately for Martin, it seemed that he was only fit for the badlands, and in rising above he lost himself along the way.

The darkness on the edge of town reminds me specifically of how in Severance Candace finds herself becoming the NY Ghost again after the collapse. Before, when she first moved to New York, the NY Ghost was a means to explore this concept of the darkness on the edge of town, the places where people don't often go, where secrets can be stored, where society begins to lose it's grasp on humanity. This darkness spreads from the edge of New York until it envelopes the entire city, the entire country, the world. By the end of Severance Candance is still looking for a place in this darkness. ****

These lines look like they could come straight from Gilb's "The Death Mask of Pancho Villa", if only for the similarity in situation. The voice in Springsteen's song is much like Gilb's narrator, however, they're both trying to let go, trying to find an epiphany about who they are and who they were, who they want to become. This is like a quarter life crises for both Gilb's protagonist and Springsteen. Looming in the background is danger, for Springsteen it is typified in the streets of fire, for Gilb, the fire on the street is the police and the threat they represent.

Springsteen's idolization of the West seems to be similar to Dagoberto Gilb's. The West, the promised land, is somewhere where the common worker can't seem to get ahead and the days drag on. The Old West is nothing but myth and now the West is only an extension of the industrial east where work dominates life. I think Gilb's stories "Al, In Phoenix", "I Danced With The Prettiest Girl", and "Down in the West Texas Town" typify this view of the West in the same way Springsteen does here: fraught with old dangers in a newly industrial space.

Ah, the precipice. Springsteen is talking about two men, who are related, standing in different places. The father is dry and neither indoors or outdoors, he bridges both realms and is neither washed and clean from the rain (baptism) or dry and full of sin. This reminds me of Melody and Big Mat in Blood on the Forge as the Big Mat stayed within the precipice between sin and goodness, and Melody embraced the rain as does the speaker in the song. Big Mat betrayed his class, but only out of his own self interest, while Melody separated himself from the class struggles at the forge and survived.**

Flames and fire, sins and desire seem to be themes present in many of the working class texts we've read. I think this most directly relates to Levine's poem "Burned" where he writes "stare into the fire / until my eyes are also fire / and tear away some piece of my face / because we're all burning in the blood".

Both Springsteen and Levine are making direct comparisons between blood (inherited sin) and fire, and though Springsteen's lyrics here are more Biblical in nature there is a feeling that this relation between blood and fire comes from a similar place to Levine's: a place of toil.