Term Paper on "Elements of the Song We Didn't Start the Fire"

Term Paper 8 pages (2643 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion are some words to the song "We didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel talking about the 20th Century, particularly the year 1961.

The entire song mentions events that are important to our history and have laid the steps towards what we live as our present. "History does not exist for us until we dig it up, interpret it, and put it together. Then the past comes alive, or, more accurately, it is revealed for what it has always been - a part of the present." Frederick W. Turner III, 1971. The sixties have been described as the "Psychedelic Sixties" by Morgan. Kathy of the University of Virginia also states "... broke the rules in every conceivable way from music to fashion (or lack of it), to manners and mores. Boundaries were challenged and crossed in literature and art; the government was confronted head-on for its policies in Vietnam; the cause of civil rights was embraced by the young; and mind-expanding drugs were doing just that."

Some of those 'boundaries' were challenged by the events, people and written works mentioned by Billy Joel in his song. This paper will discuss three of them and how they relate to each other and to us as 'part of our present'

On September 29, 1961 the New York Times featured an article titled: Bob Dylan: "20-year-old singer is bright new face at Gerde's Club." The reporter writes: "A bright new face in folk music is appearing at Gerde's Folk City. Although only 20 years old, Bob Dylan is one of the most distinctive stylists to play a Manhattan cabaret in months. Resembling a cross between a choir boy and a beatnik, Mr. Dylan has a cherubic look and a mop of tousled hair he partly covers with a Huck Finn black corduroy cap. His clothes may need a bit of tailoring, but when he works his guitar, harmonica or piano and composes new songs faster than he can remember them, there is no doubt that he is bursting at the seams with talent." After this rave review, Dylan signed a contract with Columbia Records and has not stopped singing since. Bob Dylan or Robert Allen Zimmerman was born on May 24, 1941. In his autobiography "Chronicles" (2004) Dylan writes: "What I was going to do as soon as I left home was just call myself Robert Allen...It sounded like a Scottish king and I liked it." However he discovered by reading Downbeat magazine that there was already a saxophone player called David Allyn. Dylan explains that he liked the way Allyn has changed the spelling of his last name to appear more exotic. A little later he came across Dylan Thomas and then made a choice between Robert Allyn and Robert Dylan: "I couldn't decide - the letter D. came on stronger" he explained. He decided on "Bob" as there were several Bobby's in popular music at the time (Bobby Vee, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Rydell).

Bob Dylan showed how meaningful songs with surrealist imagery could be wedded to popular music. He played a mayor role in the civil rights movement, some of his songs became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements such as "Blowin' In the Wind." It's melody partially derived from the traditional slave song "No More Auction Block.." "Blowin' In The Wind" itself was widely recorded and was an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary, setting an enduring precedent for other artists.

In 1988, when Dylan was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Bruce Springsteen spoke at the ceremony, declaring that "Bob freed the mind the way Elvis freed the body....He invented a new way a pop singer could sound, broke through the limitations of what a recording artist could achieve, and changed the face of rock and roll forever."

From folk to rock, from poems to songs, Bob has put into music feelings, attitudes, truths and desires that have marked not one but almost three generations. Back in the sixties it moved many to take action in what they thought was right. We all have heard "Blowin' in the Wind" the words to this song are as follows:

How many roads must a man walk down / Before you call him a man?

Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail / Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly / Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, / The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up / Before he can see the sky?

Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have / Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows / That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, / The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist / Before it's washed to the sea?

Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist / Before they're allowed to be free?

Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head, / Pretending he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, / The answer is blowin' in the wind.

While these words were being written to later be sung: 'Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows / That too many people have died?' On July 3, 1961 others were being read in the headline of Chicago Daily Tribune, 120. "Gunshot Kills Hemingway." When his end came, it was by his own hand, sudden and violent as the events in many of his own novels. 'Ernest Miller Hemingway was born at eight o'clock in the morning on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. In the nearly sixty two years of his life that followed he forged a literary reputation unsurpassed in the twentieth century. In doing so, he also created a mythological hero in himself that captivated (and at times confounded) not only serious literary critics but the average man as well. In a word, he was a star.'

He was a successful writer, what we would call now "extreme sports" man, doing such things as bull fighting in Spain, deep-sea fishing in Florida, and Safari's in Africa. He had become one of the great celebrities of the century. His every word, activity, drink, and clothing style was reported on in magazines such as Life. Cooperman, Stanley wrote of him: "There has been no American writer like Ernest Hemingway. Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that there has been no American like Ernest Hemingway who was also a writer. For this enfant terrible of the World War I "loss generation" was in many ways his own best character. Whether as the young "Champ" or as the middle-aged "Papa," Ernest Hemingway became a legend in his own lifetime. So completely has his name been absorbed into American culture, that he might almost seem a hero of folklore rather than a creative writer."

Some of his works are as follows: His first published work was Three Stories & Ten Poems (1923), followed by In Our Time (1925). His first novel, Torrents of Spring (1926), The Sun Also Rises (1926) gained him instant acclaim and seemed to capture what Stein labelled 'the lost generation'. Men Without Women (1927), A Farewell to Arms (1929), Death in the Afternoon (1932), The Fifth Column (1938), and one of his better novels, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).

In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the presentation speech given by Anders Osterling, he presented what Hemingway had become and is well remembered by now: 'In our modern age, American authors have set their stamp more and more strongly on the general physiognomy of literature. Our generation in particular has, during the last few decades, seen a reorientation of literary interest which implies not only a temporary change in the market but, indeed, a shifting of the mental horizon, with far-reaching consequences. All these swiftly rising new authors from the United States, whose names we now recognize as stimulating signals, had one thing in common: they took full advantage of the Americanism to which they were born. And the European public greeted them with enthusiasm; it was the general wish that Americans should write as Americans, thereby making their own contribution to the contest in the international arena. One of these pioneers is the author who is now the focus of attention. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Ernest Hemingway, more than any of his American colleagues, makes us feel we are confronted by a still young nation which seeks and finds its exact form of expression. A dramatic tempo and sharp curves have also characterized Hemingway's own existence, in many ways so unlike… READ MORE

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