I'm on Fire: a metaphor for lust, or even love

Hey little girl is your daddy home

Did he go away and leave you all alone

I got a bad desire

I’m on fire



Tell me now baby is he good to you

Can he do to you the things that I do

I can take you higher

I’m on fire



Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby

Edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley

Through the middle of my soul



At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet

And a freight train running through the

Middle of my head

Only you can cool my desire

I’m on fire

Song/Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0o9TyxPRU0

Bruce Springsteen’s song, I’m on Fire, is a prime example of metaphor in song. It is filled with comparisons that convey his lusty desire for a certain female companion. Each time he says, “I’m on fire,” he is not literally talking about combustion, rather he is “heating up” with lusty want—“I got a bad desire.” In the beginning, he implies that the girl is youthful, for she still lives with her father. He is tempting her to flee home for him, by making the comparison of him to her father and what each has to offer. Stating that she is better off with him, he claims, “I can take you higher.” He means that he can offer her opportunities that will possibly blow her mind, and it can be inferred that these opportunities are sexual.

            In describing his lust, Springsteen makes a simile to a wound—the lust is so powerful that it pains him; “it’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul.” This part of the song suggests that, perhaps, it is more than lust that is plaguing him, but even love. For, would lust really cause such pain, or does he long for even more from his partner? When he refers to the “sheets soaking wet” in the middle of the night it can be inferred that it is from his anxiety to see his mate once again, and he is troubled in her absence—“a freight train running through the middle of my head.” His soaking wet sheets could also be inferred as a wet dream suggesting that it is more of an issue of lust than love. He is certain that she is the only one that can cure his lusty disposition when he states, “only you can cool my desire.” She is his buffer; without her, he will remain anxious, lusty and incomplete.

Shakespeare's portrait: a metonym for his ambiguous life

            The image I selected that relates to my role as an English major is a portrait of William Shakespeare. This portrait, a classic, has descended for centuries in the same family, the Cobbes, hanging in their Irish home until the 1980’s when its newest owner, Alex Cobbe, had the family heirlooms transferred into a trust. He later visited the National Portrait Gallery which was having an exhibition entitled “Searching for Shakespeare” in which he found a painting that resembled his own to a tee. This portrait, which now hangs in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, had been thought to be the original, but has fallen from grace because Cobbe was able to prove that this painting was a copy of the one in his family collection. Research shows that the Cobbe painting was passed down through the Cobbes’ cousin’s marriage to the great granddaughter of Shakespeare’s only patron, Henry Wriothesley. Several other copies have been found and all are less detailed than Cobbe’s.

            This portrait is a metonym for Shakespeare’s ambiguous life. Little is known about the writer, and what we think know about him is constantly being attacked and questioned. For instance, some argue over the accuracy or likeness of the portrait, stating that it may not even be Shakespeare featured in the picture. However, with the finding of the Cobbe portrait, more people believe it is indeed Shakespeare in the picture because it is inscribed with a quotation from the Classical writer, Horace, taken from ode addressed to a playwright. Dating of the wood panel and an X-ray examination placed the origin around 1610, when Shakespeare was 46, six years before his death. This painting may, with good possibility, the only portrait of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime. With so little known about him, knowing his appearance brings the public forward a gigantic gap. Yet, still, so little is known about his life—many people even consider him to be a fraud. The ambiguous nature of this newly discovered authenticity mirrors the quest to uncover more about Shakespeare’s hidden life. The painting is simply a representation of the larger, more complex mystery that is William Shakespeare.

Cobbe Painting--up close

Janssen Portrait--copy (Folger Shakespeare Library)