Analysis of the song “American Pie”, by Don McLean
The song “American Pie”, by Don McLean, was a major rock-and-roll hit in 1971. McLean portrays famous rock-and-roll singer and songwriter Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash in 1961 by using many rhetorical strategies. The different possible interpretations of this song made it one of the most controversial songs from the 1970’s.
Don McLean was a famous singer/songwriter who was popular in the 1970’s. His music is mostly classified into rock-and-roll. The audience of this song can be anyone. The majority of the people listening to the song in the 1970’s were hippies, or people who had open minds. The purpose of this song is not just to entertain people with beautiful music, but to inform people about the life and death of Buddy Holly. McLean even mentions the touching songs Holly wrote when he describes Holly’s music as “a voice that came from you and me.” In this quote, McLean is saying that Holly’s music voices many strong opinions.
In “American Pie” McLean uses symbolism to signify American life in the 1960’s using ...
The music industry during the 1940s was filled with many talented artists who impacted the music industry and the history of rock n’ roll forever. But one of the very well known and talented artists was Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly was the first to pioneer new music genres and progressive music. Charles Hardin Holley (1936-1959) was an American musician and artist whose creative career began in 1956. The family name is correctly spelled “Holley” but his first recording contract from Decca Records in 1956 spelled his last name “Holly” and he kept it that way for the rest of his career (Griggs 1). Holly took a very influential position in the music industry and built an audience for his Rock and Roll music very quickly due to his unique voice and advanced knowledge of music. Buddy Holly is a prime example of a musical pioneer who blended resources from various music genres including a variety of popular genres such as rhythm and blues (RNB), oriental, and African (Schinder and Schwartz 85).
STUDY GUIDE ----- The Anthem Chapter 1 1.a. What is the difference between a and a? The society that is represented in the novel is futuristic in terms of the actual date, yet incredibly underdeveloped to what we experience today. The political structure obviously works, because there doesn't seem to be much discontent among the citizens.
Main theme: How a person deals with drug and alcohol addiction while in an institution
In the poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke, the speaker is reflecting on a childhood experience involving his father. Through diction and details, the speaker conveys his complex attitudes toward his father. When first read it, it appears the young boy is afraid of his father. The first line of the poem writes: "The whiskey on your breath; could make a small boy dizzy." Apparently, the father likes whisky and the smell of it is remaining on his person, which causes the young boy's aversion. The diction of "dizzy" depicts the young boy is getting overwhelmed by the smell of the drink. Imagine how a little child feels when he notices the strange smell of his parent, He feels weak or even scared. That is exactly what the young boy feels when he saw his drunken father with the distasteful smell. The poem then goes on saying: "but I hung on like death, such waltzing was not easy." This simile compares the fear of the boy to the death. To have a feeling of death is not a pleasant feeling, therefore when they started "waltzing"; the young boy thinks it is "not easy." This shows that ...
The book “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey is a heart wrenching story of James’ time in drug rehab. In this book Frey is trying to inform the reader about what it is like to go through rehab. He describes his entire time, from the day before he arrives until the day he leaves. He describes all his feelings and the routine life they give him at the clinic. The main themes of this book are holding on and love. He has trouble making any progress with the program until another patient, named Leonard, gives James a talk about holding on. He also falls in love with a girl named Lilly and finds a new love for his family. This book really illustrates a look at the drug culture and entails a history of James Frey’s stay at the clinic. He begins reading a Taoist book and learns to control his temper better. He sometimes has dreams about a bottle in one hand and a crack pipe in the other. He describes one girl blabbering on about nothing after smoking the rock. It focuses on his progression in his mind and his outlook toward life. In the beginning he hates himself and wants to die, but by the end of the book he is strong enough to smell alcohol and still choose not to drink it.
Should a neglected, discriminated, and misplaced black man living in the mid 1900s possessing a spectacular, yet unfulfilled talent for baseball be satisfied or miserable? The play Fences, written by August Wilson, answers this question by depicting the challenging journey of the main character, Troy Maxon. Troy, an exceptional baseball player during his youth, cannot break the color barrier and is kept from playing in the big leagues. That being his major life setback, Troy has a pessimistic view on the world. His attitude is unpleasant, but not without justification. Troy has a right to be angry, but to whom he takes out his anger on is questionable. He regularly gets fed up with his sons, Lyons and Cory, for no good reason. Troy disapproves of Lyons’ musical goals and Cory’s football ambitions to the point where the reader can notice Troy’s illogical way of releasing his displeasures. Frank Rich’s 1985 review of Fences in the New York Times argues that Troy’s constant anger is not irrational, but expected. Although Troy’s antagonism in misdirected, Rich is correct when he observes that Troy’s endless anger is warranted because Troy experiences an extremely difficult life, facing racism, jail, and poverty.
Strange fruit is and amazing dark poem told by Billie Holiday as very powerful song. Strange Fruit is a terrifying protest against the inhumane acts of racism. Strange Fruit was about the murders and lynching going on in the south at the time from public hangings to burnings. The south has a cruel and terrifying past that haunts the very people who still live down there and remind them that only a short time ago was no one prosecuted for killing someone of dark skin since whole towns were involved in it.
The nature of an ideology is completely personal; one’s interpretation may vary greatly from another’s interpretation. This is demonstrated in the two poems, “America” by Claude McKay and “Let America be America Again” by Langston Hughes. Both of these poems emerge from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and though these two poems each describe an ideological viewpoint of America as a place and a concept, the two speakers view the subject differently from one another. Both poets employ similar sound devices, yet the tones and themes vary between the two works.
In modern days, there is a type of crime that is growing very fast. It has become a very popular crime because it’s easily done, and it doesn’t leave a big trace, whether the crime is successful or not. The crime in question is Identity theft. Identity theft is a crime that involves a person or group pretending to be someone else for their own personal wants. The criminals use personal financial information such as social security number, bank and card information, your address and other personal information. According to the Insurance Information Institute, 15.4 million U.S. consumers have been victim to this crime, amounting to a loss of $16 billion, making it the most growing crime
The Internet plays the biggest role in identity theft. On the Internet, a thief can hide from detection while stealing peoples’ identities from their homes, being able to steal peoples’ information one by one “then disappearing into another identity,” (Vacca 60). Internet fraud consists of two phases. The first being spoofing where a fake site is set up made to look like the real thing. Once that is completed the second phase, phishing, begins. This usually starts with an email that uses the
Identity theft is an increasing epidemic. Some of the ways a person can commit identity
Identity theft has been around for decades, so it’s nothing new. The only difference now is that the general public and the government are aware of the problem and actively pursuing strategies to combat it. However, identity theft wasn’t always about stealing someone’s credit card information or trying to extort large amounts of cash. It began mostly as a political tool to stuff ballot boxes or used by teenagers to obtain fake ID’s in order to get around laws that prohibited underage people from participating in certain activities such as drinking alcohol. In more recent years however, identity theft has become much more sophisticated and advanced. With the help of computers and advanced technology, identity theft, especially through the electronic world, has become easier and easier for criminals to acquire. (FBI) Most people who engage in the illegal act typically use it for economic gain, essentially to get rich. As any crimes go, identity theft is a nonviolent crime that is relatively easy to conceal which attracts more people to at...
When choosing the students for the study, Zimbardo wanted to make sure that there were no psychological problems of any sort. He wanted them to be as normal as humanly possible for both the guards and the prisoners. There was very little that was different between the students, but when the students were put into a position of power, it was as if they had become an entirely different person. By only the second day of the experiment, the behavior changes began to emerge in both the prisoners and guards. The "prisoners" were treated exactly as if they were prisoners, being verbally and slightly physically abused. The unintentional goal was to dehumanize and deindividualize the prisoners so that they would lose all sense of identity, and become exactly how the guards had them as; numbers. By doing this the guards wanted to take their individuality in hopes to stop potential uprisings or outbreaks. Prisoners would be punished for breaking the rules by doing more "counts", push-ups, and other demeaning things as punishment. Even when new prisone...
III. Thesis Statement: Identity Theft is rapidly becoming a national issue because anyone of us could be a victim of identity theft. How we protect our self, keep our information private, identify any signs of identity theft, and report and repair our credit is up to each one of us. We have to be vigilant about our protecting ourselves from criminals.
Identity theft is whereby an individual obtains some piece of an unsuspecting victim’s sensitive information and uses it without their knowledge to commit fraud or theft. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), “people whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years and their hard earned money trying to clean up the mess the thieves have made of their good name and credit record. Some victims have lost job opportunities, been refused loans for education, housing, cars or even arrested for crimes they didn’t commit.”