The Last Resort Poem Analysis

Words: 1609
Pages: 7

The Eagles were one of the definitive bands of the 1970’s. Their classic mix of country western music and the harder rock of the 1960’s, created a definitive style of music that combined with excellent lyrics made the Eagles widely popular. Don Henley, one of the members of the eagles, wrote many of the most popular Eagles song. In fact, Don Henley wrote or helped to write twenty four of the thirty three songs on the bands greatest hits album. Despite the many great hits of the Eagles they also have many less well known songs that are equally good. Two songs that illustrate this are Hotel California and The Last Resort, one being very popular and widely liked and the other relatively unknown. I think that the popularity of Hotel California …show more content…
The song deals with a though reality for this time, that of having to protect and environment which previously had been perceived to only be around to be used by people. Therefore The Last Resort uses repetition not to give the song a more upbeat and cohesive tone, but to hammer home the point that Henley is trying to make in the song. There are many examples of this in the song the most impactful was the repetition of the word Paradise. Henley repeats the word Paradise in the song four times, but each time the meaning of the word becomes more and more ominous as a symbol of man’s destruction of the things they love. The first use of the word paradise is in reference to the first settlements and or the creation of suburbia as he says “And they called it Paradise, I don’t know why…”. This implies that creation of this settlement or the building of suburbia was not all it was cracked up to be, though it was advertised to be the greatest thing ever. The next use of Paradise is in a similar light, Henley calls it “A bunch of ugly boxes” and “The place to be, they watched the hazy sun sinking into the sea.”. These two imply not only did the creation of these suburbs make this “Paradise ugly but human expansion is destroying the Earth. Lastly Henley uses Paradise as a final warning saying, “You call someplace paradise kiss it goodbye”. Combined with the repetition of “they call it paradise I don’t know why”, gives the idea that this place that was once beautiful was torn down and made into a new “paradise”, suburbia. Which in turn was also destroyed by humans own expansion, hammering home that every paradise humans find will untimely be destroyed by them. As you can see Henley’s use of repetition of just one word gives the song a very clear meaning, which is completely different than the use of repetition in Hotel California the