The much belated analysis

Matthew Gong

Cassie Keller Cole

English 150

October 3, 2009

Four Winds

Music is a poetry whose prosody became lyrical. The song Four Winds by Bright Eyes protests the lengthy list of injustices committed by the United States of America. The song's stanzas alternate between social commentary, biblical allusions and, crimes against the U.S.'s committed against own inhabitants in its history.
The first stanza talks about the violence both physical and media centered surround one's racial and ideological identity. The deaths in the first paragraph are more figurative than literal, the loss of heritage as opposed to the loss of life. The idea of bodies in containers, a symbol of the extreme lengths people will undergo to immigrate into the U.S., contrasts in the preceding sentence. The first paragraph attacks the “melting pot” culture.
Four Winds by Bright Eyes uses the word She in reference to the United States of America. The songs is full of allusions to the bible, specifically the Book of Revelations. The first line of the chorus “But when Great Satan's gone, the Whore of Babylon...” uses the Islamic Fundamentalist representation of the United States to condemn the Countries actions, further stating that the U.S. Is the allegorical Whore of Babylon, a nation slated for an apocalyptic downfall for its wickedness. The song asserts that the U.S. has passed it's prime and is on the brink of collapse. The second chorus ends with “she breaks ,she breaks, she caves, she caves.” The pressure referred to in this chorus is the internal societal pressures that cause the country to break apart and then collapse.
By never directly referencing the U.S., instead using the pronoun “she” in it's place, Bright Eyes establishes a controversial argument without alienating a large portion of the audience immediately.