“Born to Run”
Gone for Good“Born to Run” is the Bruce Springsteen song playing through the night Will Klein spends in a Midtown South precinct holding pen. Its lyrics carry an earlier association with Ken Klein into the present, where they instead turn Will’s thoughts toward Sheila Rogers and sharpen his sense of loss.
The Song in the Holding Pen
A night-shift worker plays the song on a CD while Will is in custody. The familiar music offers him what he calls comfort food: as a Jersey boy, he knows the lyrics by heart. In the uneventful hours of detention, the song gives his thoughts a familiar path to follow.
Ken and the Desire to Escape
Before Ken’s murder, Will already connected Springsteen’s power ballads with his brother. Neither brother had lived the working-class hardships or pursued the fast cars and shore life associated with the songs, but their stories of struggle and a person in chains seeking freedom resonated with Will. The song’s longing to run away thus became part of how he understood Ken, even before the crime altered their lives.
A Changed Association
That night, the song redirects the association. A lyric about a woman so beautiful that the singer loses himself in the stars makes Will think of Sheila, and he aches for her again. The movement from Ken to Sheila gives the song a changing emotional function: its recurring language of longing and escape first recalls his brother, then brings his grief for Sheila into focus.
