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We Didn ´ T Start The Fire

Good Essays

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

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