In the song “We didn´t start the fire” Billy Joel does a summary of the most relevant events that took place between 1949 and 1989. The events mentioned in the song include political, cultural, and historical events. Billy Joel´s generation was involved in these events mentioned in the song. His generation is blamed for all the conflicts that occurred in those forty years, when in reality, those conflicts have roots many generations in the past. He portrays the positive and negative effects his generation had in the world. In the positive side, they had advances in science and many cultural events. In the other hand, they were involved in dozens of conflicts all around the world that left misery and death. He emphasizes that many of the …show more content…
Most of these conflicts were generated hundreds of years ago and passed from generation to generation. One example of these problems that can be seen in the song is the segregation in America, which was originated hundreds of years ago when the first slaves settled in the Americas. Racism was transferred from one generation to the other. Eventually, all the racial problems exploded in the 1960s and the racial discrimination was blamed to Joel´s generation. In addition, the second theme is the failed attempt of his generation to achieve world peace. Billy Joel’s generation tried to fix international conflicts and achieve world peace. They also had notable leaders like Kennedy and Malcom X, who tried to fight for human rights. As expressed by Billy Joel “No we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.” With this phrase, he is trying to express that his generation tried to fix several conflicts in the world. Some elements that helped analyze the poem are the rhyme elements, figurative language, sound effects, and other elements of poetry.
Many songs or poems contain an established rhythm. A rhythm is “a literary device which demonstrates long and short pattern through stressed and unstressed syllables” (CITATION). Billy Joel uses end rhyme, internal rhyme, near rhyme, and a rhyme scheme to create a rhythm in his song. He uses end rhyme at the end of the each line to make the song flow better. End rhyme is when the last syllables within a verse rhyme
He mentions the fight in the House of Representatives that broke out, in relation with the civil rights bill. He also about the equality between black and white people in the 1960’s. At this point this is being read the words “all is calm, all is bright” this completely contrast from the subject about racism but the song is representing a sense of tranquillity as if everything is okay when it is not.
1.Five references from the song are North Korea/South Korea, England’s got a new queen, Joseph Stalin, Elvis Presley, and Berlin. Joel references historical events starting in 1949 through 1989. The allusions help me understand Billy Joel’s message in the song, by showing that history will never stop. The generations of the world inherit previous generations historical events.
The poem also uses end rhyme to add a certain rhythm to the poem as a whole. And the scheme he employs: aabbc, aabd, aabbad. End rhyme, in this poem, serves to effectively pull the reader through to the end of the poem. By pairing it with lines restricted to eight syllables. The narrator creates an almost nursery-rhyme like rhythm. In his third stanza however, his last line, cutting short of eight syllables, stands with an emphatic four syllables. Again, in the last stanza, he utilizes the same technique for the last line of the poem. The narrator’s awareness of rhyme and syllable structure provides the perfect bone structure for his poem’s rhythm.
He uses this in the poem to give it rhythm to engage the reader and
She also presents a slight rhythm to the reading that allows for smooth reading. In keeping with her open form, there is no set scheme to the rhyme pattern. However, there is a single ending sound constantly repeated without a set pattern throughout the work. She also connects pairs of lines at random just for the sake of making connections to make that particular stanza flow. At the same time, she chose blatantly not to rhyme in certain parts to catch the reader’s attention.
A rhyme scheme is the ordered pattern of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a poem or verse. “When You Are Old” W.B Yeats uses Quatrains that has an ABBA rhyme scheme. For example in “How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrow of your changing face.” Grace and face rhyme and true and you rhyme so it makes it ABBA rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme for “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” Dylan Thomas uses five tercets and a concluding quatrain.The five tercets are written in ABA for example “Though wise men at their end know dark is right Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.” Right and night rhyme so it makes it an ABA rhyme
The poem, “Po’ Boy Blues” uses rhyme in the fourth and sixth lines of each stanza.
Society has been molded by a variety of influences upon it. Looking back in time, society has changed drastically within the recent years, and continues to change as time moves forward. Time creates history, and history is the recording of events that have brought an impact upon society. In the year of nineteen eighty-nine, Billy Joel, a musician, released the song, “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” The lyrics of this song name events that the majority of people knew and talked about in the time period those events happened. The musician put forty years of history into a song, starting from the year nineteen forty-nine of which he was born, and ending at nineteen eighty-nine when the song was written. The term “fire” is metaphorically used for
The song has an irregular rhyme scheme but still, holds a musical effect. It doesn’t take away from the song but adds depth to it allowing you to see that what's important are the words and the meaning behind them not how pretty it would sound. The rhythm allows for the tone to shine through as with certain parts, it takes a longer time to read and the other times it is much faster. The pace changes with the moods.
For example, end rhymes in the poem alternate lines with very few variations, implementing frequently repeated, and alarmingly simplistic rhyming words such as: "Lee," "sea," "me," and "we."
Other rhyme techniques noticed are the rhyming end lines that follow an ABAB pattern. This rhyming helps the poem flow and move along.
“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (Bradbury 3). Towards the beginning of the novel it is noticeable that fire is praised by the protagonist and those who choose to conform to society’s rules. In this quote in particular, fire is being used as a tool against literature.
Every song has a story to tell, and some contain hidden stories or lessons, while others are completely blatant. In Billy Joel’s song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” he does not hesitate to be very obvious with what he tries to prove, which is how all of the events in his song contribute to one large fire. I chose to remediate Joel’s song because it spoke to me with historical context. When researching the song, I read a majority of the history behind it and decided to reflect upon it in a visual picture collage, combining a majority of the elements he mentions with pictures--all circled around a fire in the middle. I decided to also make red-dyed cupcakes reflecting the fire Joel speaks of and ice them with a flame, yet placing an X over it,
Free verse is not just prose written with irregular line endings. Free verse is poetry without regular patterns of rhyme, rhythm or meter. Note: free verse has rhythm and meter. The pattern, however, is irregular. Rhythm is often created through the use of other poetic devices, including repetition, alliteration, and other sound devices. Although it is "free" of metrical restrictions, it is still patterned and unified by the conventional poetic devices of repetition, assonance, and alliteration. The article "the", ordinarily disregarded, begins seven of the eleven lines and establishes a pattern that is seen on the page and heard when the poem is given voice. Alliteration lends ear-pleasing melody in
Rock music videos tend to be the opposite to Pop music videos. They tend to use a much darker colour palette than Pop music videos symbolistic of the often darker, rawer sound of rock music. Rock videos commonly are performanced based showing the band playing the song either in a concert environment or some other environment that may better fit for the song, for example the music video ‘I Am The Fire’ (image to right) by the band Halestorm. As you can see fire is included as part of the set in order to link it to the lyrics. This performance based video reflects the concert atmosphere in which this genre thrives. Some bands also use a mix of performance and narrative driven music videos, an example of this is the video for ‘My Medicine’ by