Subdivisions

Well, after having worked on my Winesburg, Ohio essay outline and explored several different themes of the book, such as coming-of-age, lust, and the idea of truth, one theme really stood out me, which was loneliness. Obviously Sherwood Anderson knew that it was something worth mentioning considering he centered an entire story around Enoch Robinson and his struggle with isolation and being understood and accepted by everyone else around him. Thinking about Enoch’s struggle with loneliness even when surrounded by so many people made me realize that these struggles are the same exact ones high school kids like myself face every single day in suburbanized society, a topic which is the center of “Subdivisions” by Rush. The song, in brief summary, describes the natural way of conformity that kids must face in high school, how the identical houses that line the streets of the suburbs that they live in leave no room for individuality or uniqueness, and those who cannot live up to this formatted expectation are ostracized from society. The song opens with detailing how identical all the suburban houses look, “In geometric order/an insulated border/in between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown”. Already, the song is delving into the suburban culture that is spread out across the country, one where people have lost a sense of identity and individuality and mold their living based on a standard set by someone else. There is no room to explore different paths in life since the suburbs have eradicated all other paths beside the one in which they want people to follow. In this place, “opinions [are] all provided/the future pre-decided”, everyone is blinded to the fact that they are destined to suffer the same fate, regardless of how different or better they may feel their lives our from others. Those who dare to step outside the pre-determined mold of society, whether they want to go beyond what has been placed before them or simply want to fit the mold, can find no peace, since “nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone”. With the song’s progression into the chorus, we get a glimpse of the true demographic that lyricist Neil Peart is talking about, the “uncool” kids of high school. It is easy to fit ourselves into the shoes of the kid who sees all the popular kids go by as they are left alone. Suburban high school is a vicious world, one must “conform or be cast out…any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth/but the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dream of youth”. Outcast kids are displaced from the world of social acceptance, forced to withdraw from the world of social gathering and instead take comfort in the few things in life that help them forget about the harsh terms that their peers have set for them. Whether it is reading books, playing video games, or anything else, these are the kids who haven’t let the suburbs compromise who they are as people, and for that they are forced to suffer. On the other side, even if they may not realize it, the “popular” kids are destined to suffer too, as in life they will be the ones who, “sell their dreams for small desires or lose their rose to rats/get caught in ticking traps/and start to dream of somewhere to relax their restless flight”. Ultimately isolation plagues both the popular and the outcast; it’s just that those who aren’t accepted already know that they are alone while those who are accepted hide amongst people to their escape their own internal loneliness.