River Deep - Mountain High, a song by Tina Turner - Assignment Example

“River Deep - Mountain High,” a song by Tina Turner Brief summary Little girls love dolls even if they are ragged ones and Tina had such a doll and she loves her man the way she loved that rag doll. A puppy is ever at the heels of a young boy because it is loyal and faithful to him, the master, and she’ll be just as loyal and faithful to her man. And if she ever happens to lose him, she would cry as she has never cried before in her whole life. And her refrain expresses the depth and height of her love rather symbolically.

Introduction The song is extremely romantic and highly symbolic like most oldies. It is about an issue that always stays at the forefront of Tina’s thoughts. Obviously, she is having a good time as she hasn’t lost her lover or anything. We often say ‘as deep as a river’ and ‘as high as a mountain’ to reckon the measure of an emotion that we truly feel in the most poignant manner and, since the idea is the very title of the song, we can safely assume that Tina is underlining the profundity of her emotions for her man, by placing the issue on the title of the song where it is very noticeable.

Imagery used In the first stanza, Tina uses the imagery of a rag doll which means that she used to be a poor girll and her only toy was the rag doll, but it being a useless rag doll did not prevent her from cherishing it. By this she implies that she’d cherish her lover even if he is poor and unlucky. Now that she is grown up and her love is no longer simple like childhood love but has grown stronger and more complicated. The second imagery that she uses is that of a puppy which always follows its master, a boy, faithfully.

Here it means that she’d always follow him through life loyally and faithfully like a dog, no matter what happens, even if it might seem blind and foolish to others. Like every person who is head over heels in love, the fear of losing her lover looms high in the horizon. Here, Tina is confident that her man wouldn’t jilt her, but the probability is always there dangling before her, to be feared as well as expected, in which case she’d cry her heart out. At this point, she uses a few imageries that present the essential poignancy to any love song worth its salt.

She pairs spring and flower singing “school boy and his pet” which raises the song almost to the heights of poetry. And to top it all, there is the imagery of her love being as deep as the river and as high as the mountain which creates a contrast to the whole affair. Maybe, Tina means that she’d keep on loving him even if he is down and out or doing quite okay. In this song, the woman is featured as faithful and submissive like that of in the times when she sang her song. The man in the poem is strictly one dimensional as she is not singing about him but her love for him which is more important to her.

Yes, circumstances do change as if by any chance he leaves her, she’d be a different woman. There are no common sense ideas here and both the macro and micro levels are about her connection with her lover. Yes, love can get out of control as when “If I lost you would I cry.” There is no race, class, ethnicity, sexuality involved here. But there is power, the power of her man over her as he can leave her any time he wished and she can’t do anything but be helpless and shed tears.