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Diagnosc Essay: Hotel California
While listening to The Eagle’s ‘Hotel California’, I find myself imagining a lost soul trying to find its
way in the world. I have never thought this song to be literal in its imagery, but rather a metaphor for life
in general.
I believe this song is describing a person, any person, and their travel through life. It isn’t anyone
specific, it could be any person. The song begins with a person traveling down a “highway”, which I take
to be life. They are distracted by a sound, which I imagine to be some kind of disturbance or change in
their path. Then, a woman appears and ushers them into the hotel. I believe the woman to be
temptaon, and the hotel is the person’s guilt for succumbing to temptaon. The woman and the hotel
keep the person there as long as they can by making everything seem wonderful and ok. Throughout
the song they refer to ‘voices’ calling the person back to the real world, which I think are the person’s
conscience. The song’s tone changes when the person realizes that everything in the hotel is not
perfect. This is the point in the song that the person asks for his wine and is told there isn’t any. From,
there the song goes to an almost panicky feeling where the person is trying to escape the hotel (guilt)
and return to ‘the place I was before’ which is life before temptaon took hold of them.
