The Boxer

Simon & Garfunkel wrote "The Boxer" on the 1970 album "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

This is one of many Simon & Garfunkel songs that has impacted and touched my heart. The song tells about a young man who has thrown away his life for what has amounted to nothing.

He leaves home in order to be free from his family and spends everything. After this he becomes impoverished. He lives in the railroad stations with all the other poor and desperate folks.

He proactively looks for work and no one will give him the time of day... all accept the prostitutes.

In his brokenness, he sleeps with the prostitutes--he feels as if they are the only ones who care.

The next verse talks about the young prodigal man wanting to return home from the big city (in his case NYC). Though he doesn't and that's the last thing we know of the young man.

In the final verse there is a "boxer, a fighter by His trade," hence the name of the song. The song never tells the listener whether or not the young man is the boxer but I have a hunch that it is.

The young man (The Boxer), unlike the prodigal son never returned home and continues to attempt to climb his way out of his broken life by fighting. The young man never returned home due to shame and fear of what his family would think of him.

I find many times like the Young Man/Boxer. I have these dreams of greatness only to be left with mumbles...nothing. But unlike the Young Man, I have wonderful, loving people around me so that I don't have to bare the brokenness of my own life alone.

Some days I want to give up on my dreams and throw in the towel. But I continue to press on, ask forgiveness, put up my dukes and go at it again.

In closing I love songs like this that speak so honestly to life and about the fight of the prodigal man and woman.

Here is the song for all who haven't heard it:

Sources cited:

The Simon & Garfunkel picture

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/simon-garfunkel-mn0000038936