Last Dance with Mary Jane - Tom Petty

Tom Petty is a well-known southern singer-songwriter and guitarist in the rock genre of musical talent. Some of his most famous songs are "Free Falling" and "American Girl." Tom Petty cleverly mixes in various poetic devices into many of his songs. One of his songs, "Last Dance with Mary Jane," is about how he met a girl from Indiana and fell in with her, but he told her he couldn't stay long and had to "keep movin' on." This song is a great example of how Tom Petty utilizes poetic devices to demonstrate his songwriting abilities that enrich and enhance the quality of his songs.
“Last Dance with Mary Jane” contains many examples of poetic devices. It is an ambiguous song strewn with an example of imagery, flashback, conflict, euphemism, and ambiguity. The first two verses, when Tom Petty is talking about a girl who grew up in Indiana and how they met when she moved, is an example of a flashback because it is something that happened before the actual story that he is singing about. The fourth verse, demonstrates an internal conflict in himself that shows how “tired of this town” (15) and unhappy with himself he is. For example, he says, “I’m tired of screwin' up, tired of going down, Tired of myself, tired of this town” (15). Tom Petty utilizes descriptive words that let the reader visualize the scene, or imagery, in this song as well. Such imagery is present in the following lines: “There's pigeons down on Market Square. She's standin' in her underwear, Lookin' down from a hotel room. Nightfall will be comin' soon” (22-25). By reading and/or listening to these lines, one can really imagine the described scene in his or her mind. This song is ambiguous because no one can be positively sure if Tom Petty is singing about actually dancing with a girl named Mary Jane or if “Mary Jane” is a euphemism for something else. A euphemism is a mild phrase that substitutes for another considerably more inappropriate phrase. Since “Mary Jane” is a commonly known euphemism for marijuana, it is most likely that Tom Petty uses the phrase “Dancing with Mary Jane” as a euphemism for smoking weed. This makes sense because marijuana is known for temporarily easing pain and, in every verse where he says, “Last dance with Mary Jane,” he always follows it with “one more time to kill the pain.” The phrase "last dance with Mary Jane" is considered a double entendre; meaning that it can be understood in either of two ways.
Tom Petty expertly uses a euphemism to make his song mysteriously ambiguous. Euphemism and ambiguity are not the only poetic devices in his song; he also throws in a flashback and an inner conflict among some vivid examples of imagery. All these devices combined work to make this song enjoyable to listen to and challenging to decipher.