This line call back to themes discussed in "What Work Is" and more specifically the poem, "Fire". The connection arises aesthetically, and here the image of a man heading straight for the storm can be likened to the son from "Fire", who as a fire fighter heads directly into the fire storming in the mountains. However, even though the motifs here and setting are somewhat similar, they operate in each respective work in totally opposite ways. In "The Promised Land" this storm and twister thats going to ravage everything in sight, that will blow away both dreams and lies, is something the character embraces as a rebirth which he is dying to run into head first. In "Fire" the all encompassing fire which the son is working in to quell takes away his "sense of time and place" as he works nonstop.

This idea of having a secret and trying to keep it is like the idea of being marked which we discussed in Martin Eden. Reminiscent of Thoreau "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation". When thinking about the working class, how the characters we have studied keep secrets or try to transcend their pasts, how the labor and lifestyle leaves a trace that can't be washed away or forgotten. This theme is mentioned other times in the album, and while the lines here can be applied to various different themes and situations, it seems clear through the context of this song and the album at large that Springsteen is addressing this feeling of desperation: which is bred and passed down through generations, which the characters in this album see as permeating every inch of their town and every aspect of their lives, which is something that leads his characters to seek the darkness on the edge of town rather than stay in the quiet, empty, desperation enveloping the badlands.

These aspirations of class ascension call back to the themes we discussed in "Blood on the Forge" as well as "Martin Eden". In "Blood on the Forge" we see Big Mat take "all the money he had been saving" in order to take Anna on a shopping spree. In "Martin Eden" its made clear that Martin wants to become a writer because he believes it will eventually be a very lucrative job, which will allow him to raise his station and marry Ruth. In both those works and this song, we see a connection between being finically secure, and developing a sense of personal freedom. In "Blood on the Forge" the money allows Big Mat to exercise some agency in his life, to take control and begin to make a life he can call his own by creating the image of security. Martin Eden knows that if he starts making good money, he doesn't have to give his life to the sea and can establish a life for himself and something other than just another hired hand. These characters are trying to prove something, and in "Prove It all Night" Springsteen discusses the same theme. His character is trying to "get his hands clean" to wash off the dirt of the working class and ascend above those stigmas that come with the working life. Only after that does the character believe he can buy his "baby" and ring and dress and begin a life he can truly own.

This refrain, as well as the title of this song, reminds me of multiple works from this semester: "Life in the Iron Mills" and "Blood on the Forge". In both of these texts, our the working life is what defines the characters. They do not merely work for a living, work is in fact their lives and that means working round the clock and doing whatever it takes to keep working. Here, Springsteen highlights how even something as all consuming and crushing as factory work can become a way of life, and how that way of life becomes inseparable from people existence and experiences. Even when the whistle blows and the shift is over, that doesn't mean the working life ends, it only means the workers must go somewhere for the night, taking all the pain and toil that they carry, and get ready to return tomorrow.

Reminiscent of the discussion of nostalgia from Severance/ disillusionment and discontent. IN these lyrics from Springsteen, the idea of the heartland is likened to a bunch of propped up cardboard fronts, something of the set of TV show. "Don’t you think it’s strange Ashley became fevered in her childhood house? It’s like nostalgia has something to do with it" (143). From this quote from Severance, we even see the narrator Candace likening the trapping of nostalgia to the disease she faces throughout the course of the novel. The feeling of nostalgia, on returning to the "same old played out scene" can be dangerous.

Like a scene out of a Gilb story, the kinds of comforts we have seen afforded to the working class across a few of our texts this year, a need to drown things out. More specifically, this song, "Somethign in the Night" and the scene its describing sounds almost exactly like the scene from "Love in LA" from Gilb's "The Magic of Blood". In these lines, we see a young man fixated on his car, and his radio, and using the act of driving as a time to both ponder and also push away any unwanted thoughts. Like we talked about in class, this scene highlights a certain kind of escapism which the working class can take part in.