[2] The lyrics mostly describe the central character as a blue collar worker who, after working a full day, runs off into the night to go drag racing and search for the love of a woman.
[4] The desperation and darkness of the lyrics makes a strong contrast with some of the other songs on the Born to Run album, which glorify night life.
[1] Although "Night" and "Born to Run" show Springsteen beginning to deal seriously with blue collar protagonists, he would develop the theme further on his next album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, in which he would portray additional facets of blue collar working life on songs such as "Badlands", "Adam Raised a Cain", "The Promised Land", "Prove It All Night" and, especially, "Factory".
[3][5] This central theme would later be explored on The River, especially in the song "Out in the Street", and became a focus of Springsteen's post-Darkness on the Edge of Town songwriting dealing with working class characters leading dead-end lives.
The result is a "wash" of sound where some individual instruments are difficult to define, yet blend in to create a dense orchestral ambiance.