Born in the U.S.A.

In the song “Born in the U.S.A”, Bruce Springsteen criticizes the structure of society, war and the treatment of the working class. Far from the patriotic anthem that some believe it to be, this song tells the story of a boy who is forced into war and returns to find that there is nothing left for him in this country.

In the third stanza, he says “Sent me off to a foreign land/ To go and kill the yellow man”. This is a clear reference to the Vietnam War. Often in war, it is the lower classes that are forced to do the actual fighting because they have no other options. Especially in the Vietnam War when the draft was implemented, the rich were able to avoid it by going to school, but the poor had no choice but to go to war.

When many veterans got back from the war, they weren’t treated with a lot of respect and had trouble getting their lives together. The second to last stanza says, “Down in the shadow of the penitentiary/Out by the gas fire of the refinery/ I’m ten years burning down the road/ Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go”. The only options for the speaker of this poem were to work the rest of his life at a meaningless refinery job or to go to jail. This song was a blatant critique of how we perceive war and the opportunities of America. The title serves as an ironic reminder that even in the supposed land of limitless opportunities not everyone who is born in the United States is given the same chance to succeed.