Isolation

While reflecting on Nebraska years after its release Springsteen told Dave Marsh, "That whole Nebraska album was just that isolation thing and what it does to you... when you lose that sense of community, there's some spiritual breakdown that occurs. And when that occurs, you just get shot off somewhere where nothing seems to matter" (382).
Experiences of being alone form the backbone to the stories in the album. Beginning with mass murderer Charles Starkweather being sentenced to the electric chair, every song is filled with people who have been taken out of any healthy social context. Although "Atlantic City" begins with a man telling his girl to get dressed up for a trip, it ends with him out of work and telling his honey that he is going off to do a favor for "this guy" who he most likely met on the loser side. "Mansion of the Hill" gives us moments of community between a father and a son and a brother and a sister, even if those are communal moments of longing. But in the end, the narrator is left alone in Linden town as he watches two scenes, the real -life cars of the world he knows and the Mansion he will always be seperated from. "Johhny 99" tells us about Ralph, a man whose job was taken away. In about three minutes of music he is left to spend the next 99 years of his life alone, wishing instead for the execution line. Although the chorus of "Highway Patrolman" has Joe and Frank "laughing and drinking", the song ends with the brothers forever seperated because that same brotherly love keeps Joe from locking Frank up as he deserved. Community quickly breaks down into two men alone. Perhaps the most isolated character on the album is the eerie driver of "State Trooper" who is pleading with an authority figure to leave him alone who is not even present. He alludes to getting back to his baby, but in the end he has nobody to speak to, thus directing his "last prayer" to simply "somebody out there". The opening scene of "Used Cars" is that of a young boy watching his family drive away on a test run of the family's potential "brand-new used car". Why he is left out is unclear, but it is obvious that for this specific morning he is all alone. This may be why he longs for his own new car so that he can choose his own isolation on the road. The driver of "Open All Night" wants desperately to get back to his baby but he has been driving all night and still has three hours to go. This is not a normal commute. This is a trip of mind numbing lonliness. Far from a pleasant joy ride, "this turnpike is spooky at night when you're all alone." The narrator of "My Father's House" seeks relationship with his father but comes to find that he has isolated himself for too long and consequently now his "sins lie unatoned". "Reason to Believe" contains four seperate images that place the lonely period on Nebraska. A man stands outside his car poking a dead dog hoping it will "get up and run". A woman waits at the end of a dirt road for the man who left her to return. A baby being baptized quickly transfoms into an old man dead in "a whitwashed shotgun shack". By the river a groom is stood up by his wife-to-be, forced to "stand alone and watch the river run by so effortlessly". Of course, the most important charcter on this album that is dealing with being isolated is Springsteen. Without the band to distract him, he was left alone in Colts Neck, NJ with only his guitar, harmonica, TEAC four-track recorder, and doubt as to how, if at all, people find a way to make it in a world that trys to pull them apart.