Reason to Believe

The first song, the title track, off his next album is his most famously misunderstood lyric. But it's "Reason to Believe," the final track on 1982's Nebraska, which is the most ambiguous song Bruce Springsteen ever recorded. Just how ambiguous is this most ambiguous of all Bruce Springsteen songs? This ambiguous: even the artist himself misinterpreted what it was about. 

On November 19, 1984, in Kansas City, Springsteen said, "this is a song about blind faith and its tragic consequences." Which just goes to prove, yet again, that sometimes even the most intelligent, most talented and most thoughtful artists don't actually understand their own work. Because that may be one interpretation of "Reason to Believe"...but it's not what it's "about." Frankly, it's not even an interpretation well supported by the actual text. 

There are five groups of characters in the four verses, and only one is a victimsof an abundance of blind faith. The driver in the first verse, for instance, hit the dog and now he's hoping against hope it'll come back.

Seen a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch
He's lookin' down kinda puzzled pokin' that dog with a stick
Got his car door flung open he's standin' out on highway 31
Like if he stood there long enough that dog'd get up and run
Struck me kinda funny seem kinda funny sir to me
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

He didn't hit it expecting it would come back. He hit it and now he's hoping it won't be really dead—maybe only mostly dead. Deep down, he knows better, but he can't help hoping he's wrong. The parents baptize their child and the mourners pray for the deceased—and if that's all for naught, what of it? Who or what does it harm? The parents aren't denying the baby needed medical attention, and the dead man didn't seem to refuse treatment in favor of faith. It doesn't change anything for them, not in the time immediately preceding the song and not immediately after the song. 

Take a baby to the river Kyle William they called him
Wash the baby in the water take away little Kyle's sin
In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away take his body to the graveyard and over him they pray Lord won't you tell us
tell us what does it mean
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe  

As for the groom in the last verse, she agreed to marry him, which is a pretty strong bit of evidence that she was intending to actually marry him. When one person asks another to get married and the party of the second part agrees to marry the party of the first part, it's not blind faith on the party of the first part to assume the party of the second part is actually going to go through with it.   

Congregation gathers down by the riverside
Preacher stands with his Bible, groom stands waitin' for his bride
Congregation gone and the sun sets behind a weepin' willow tree
Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly
Wonderin' where can his baby be
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

But then there's Mary Lou.

Now Mary Lou loved Johnny with a love mean and true
She said "Baby I'll work for you every day and bring my money home to you"
One day he up and left her and ever since that
She waits down at the end of that dirt road for young Johnny to come back
Struck me kinda funny seemed kind of funny sir to me
How at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

Mary Lou may indeed be a victim of blind faith, in that she's still there waiting at the end of the dirt road, pissing her life away, hoping against hope—no, against all clear evidence and common sense—that young Johnny will come back when it's crystal clear to everyone that he's never going to. So, okay, one of the five subjects of this song may indeed have fallen prey to a surfeit of blind faith. 

But the rest of the song is about faith—just not blind faith. It's about the faith people have, that they cling to, in desperation, even when all available evidence would lead one to give up the ghost. That's foolish faith, perhaps, or simply an overabundance of faith. But it's not blind faith.   

It's an interesting song, in terms of construction. The first verse, for instance, is the only one where the guy seems to definitely be at fault—assuming he's the one who hit the dog, and that it's not actually his dog and someone else hit it and the owner's now dearly hoping his beloved dog'll get up and run. All the rest would seem to be victims of fate. The first verse is also the only one where the narrator is directly witnessing the scene being described: in all the others, it's omniscient. 

Interestingly, the second and third verse tell, more or less, the same story, just swapping the genders and locales. Meanwhile, the first and third verses both deal with death, but in very different ways. The third verse is the only one with two contrasting stories, whereas all the others are single tale verses. And it's this third verse, with its circle of life that's really the heart of the song. The first verse may also have dealt with death, but the third adds birth and religion to the mix, leading the narrator to address God directly, begging him to tell us what it all means. 

There's no answer. Just another verse conveying a heartbreaking tale of betrayal and lost love. And a jilted, humuliated, perplexed groom staring at the river rushing past, implaccable, unknowable. As is Springsteen's voice: as he sings the final lines, his delivery is first whispery and then rises to the kind of semi-shout with which the more casual Springsteen fan is most accustomed, but neither delivery gives any indication whatsoever what the singer is really thinking about, what his feelings on these matters of faith truly are. And then the lyrics drop out and it's just Springsteen's guitar, rumbling on like the river rushing past, as time stretches out. Is he thinking about the vagaries of nature? Or the incredibly short lifetime of humans compared to billions of years of the planet? Is he thinking of drowning himself? 

Who knows. All we're left with is the knowledge that somehow, some way, for some reason, people still find some reason to believe. Is this admirable? Is it worthy of contempt? Springsteen gives no indication, in the lyrics or his performance. All we know is that they do. 

Reason to Believe 

Comments

[fish]

Springsteen's interpretation works if you view the narrator/storyteller's perspective as one of bewilderment, i.e. "look at all these cases where their faith is completely unwarranted, I don't get it." It frames the storyteller as much more cynical than any of the subjects of the story, but works in that context. But as you say, ambiguous.

[Don D]

"Struck me kinda funny seemed kind of funny sir to me"

Who's the teacher and who's the student? Maybe he hasn't figured that part out yet.