Tom Petty's 'Into The Great Wide Open'

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Imagine endless parties, a girlfriend, a taste of stardom, and what seems like an endless rock and roll dream, and then you lose it all. This is exactly what happens in Tom Petty’s song “Into the Great Wide Open” when Eddie moves to Hollywood, California to try and make it big in the music industry. Tom Petty’s narrative poem “Into the Great Wide Open” has a shifting tone and tells the story of a realistic life of a rockstar. Tom Petty’s “Into the Great Wide Open” is a narrative poem that tells the story of Eddie and his rise and fall as a rockstar. In the song Eddie finishes high school and decides to leave everything behind and move to Hollywood, California to start his new life. Eddie meets a girl and then decides to get a tattoo. Soon after he learns guitar from his girlfriend and starts working at a nightclub as a bouncer and they move into a nice place. Newspapers start charting Eddie’s rise to fame and success and claim he plays his music from the heart. Eddie gets an agent and a roadie named Bart and Eddie makes a hit record. Eddie is living the rock n roll dream. He starts sporting a leather jacket with chains. He parties and meets movie stars but when the A and R man doesn’t think Eddie will have another hit he fires Eddie and is left with no job and is clueless about his future. …show more content…

Towards the end the tone is bleak, unhopeful, and defeated. In the beginning the things seem to be getting better and better for Eddie. For example, he meets a girlfriend, gets a new place with her, and learns how to play guitar along the way. He also is noticed by the newspapers and they claim he plays from the heart and gains a following. Then he acquires an agent, a roadie, and makes a hit Record. Eddie is at the top! His dream had come true! Then, the tone suddenly shifts to being bleak, hopeless, sad, and

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