To me, “Born to Run” in its entirety sounds like a musical. “Jungleland” by itself would make a great musical–something like “West Side Story.” It makes very ordinary people sound heroic. Is that the entire message?
No. Springsteen is not a fool; he knows he’s creating a myth, not describing reality. The biggest line in the song–“But they wind up wounded, and not even dead”–is his way of telling us that.
But that line, devastating as it is, is a form of CYA. The grandness of the music and the narrative overwhelms it. The average listener comes away with the message that street kids in New Jersey are larger than life. That’s why the song is so popular.