Telegraph Road Sparknotes
When I first heard “Telegraph Road” by Dire Straits I was drawn by the instrumental music that started with hushed strings and keyboards and rose to a thundering crescendo of drums, keyboards, strings, and electric guitars. In a quiet relaxed mood the 14 minute and 18 second story begins with a man ”walking 30 miles with a pack on his back” (Mark Knopfler, 1982). He stops when he finds an idyllic spot to build a cabin and a field for planting by a lake. As the song progresses people come and build near the man until a large city takes shape and a mine becomes its main source of employment. As in most written tragedies the mine closes and another man loses his job but promises his wife he will take her far away. The instrumental music between
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Having visited and driven through Detroit in 2014 myself I can see the aftermath and the downtown that was in its beginning when they drove the road back in 1982. There are two pronounced similes in the song, the first is the man who goes into the wilderness by himself presumably to be alone (his dream?) and the man who is trying to the same thing by leaving the same place. In the first instance, the man goes to be alone only be to be followed and for those people to settle down by him. As the city grows, industry comes in and things are good until the factory closes. The song moves to the man who loses his job and now is trying to find a way out. I find it also to be a perspective on how “the city” is not the panacea it’s made up to be. Metaphorically speaking the two men are looking for the same thing, one found it initially, solitude, and the other found it, a job. Now that the second man lost his job he presumably has to make the journey the first man did. The author wrote this while in the front seat of their tour bus traveling on Telegraph Road, aka U.S. Route 24 (Wardlaw, 2014). He imagined what it must have been like when the first human(s) settled this area and what they must have thought. Contrasted with the decay seen in the city with abandoned homes and factories it
Having visited and driven through Detroit in 2014 myself I can see the aftermath and the downtown that was in its beginning when they drove the road back in 1982. There are two pronounced similes in the song, the first is the man who goes into the wilderness by himself presumably to be alone (his dream?) and the man who is trying to the same thing by leaving the same place. In the first instance, the man goes to be alone only be to be followed and for those people to settle down by him. As the city grows, industry comes in and things are good until the factory closes. The song moves to the man who loses his job and now is trying to find a way out. I find it also to be a perspective on how “the city” is not the panacea it’s made up to be. Metaphorically speaking the two men are looking for the same thing, one found it initially, solitude, and the other found it, a job. Now that the second man lost his job he presumably has to make the journey the first man did. The author wrote this while in the front seat of their tour bus traveling on Telegraph Road, aka U.S. Route 24 (Wardlaw, 2014). He imagined what it must have been like when the first human(s) settled this area and what they must have thought. Contrasted with the decay seen in the city with abandoned homes and factories it