Analysis Of The Song 'When The Levee Breaks'

The song “When the Levee Breaks” was originally written by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929, and then Led Zepplin adopted it in their album Led Zeppelin IV. The song was about The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. During the time it was said that African-Americans were held at gunpoint to repair the the levee. Due to this many African Americans were left with nothing and had to travel to the North in search of a better life. So the meaning of the song is a retailing of that and the emotions of an african american during that time.

The narrator is someone who is worried over the levee breaking, and he is also African American. The lyrics “When the levee breaks I'll have no place to stay.” prove he’s anticipating it breaking. And “All last night sat on the levee and moaned,” correlates to him as being African American because they were forced to work on the levee. The tone is mournful since this man is worried about losing everything he has and he can’t even go to his family or home because he’s forced to work on the levee.

It’s a regular meter, so it starts with stressed and ends with unstressed.

It has some Rhyme, for example “Lord mean old levee taught me to weep and moan

Got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home”. “If it keeps on rainin' levee's goin' to break, If it keeps on rainin' levee's goin' to break” is an example of repetition. The only sample of alliteration would be “make a mountain man”, and there is no onomatopoeia.

There isn’t much of a vivid image other than “When you're tryin' to find your way home, You don't know which way to go?” showing that it’s so flooded you can easily get lost. The only personification is calling the levee mean. There are no similes or

metaphors.

The entire song is about the event, talking about the flood in Mississippi. The narrator is feeling hopeless and sadden about the event. He feels hopeless when he says “Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,” and sad “Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan” The whole song is him speaking about the flood.
The song is a little over the place because there are similarities in line lengths when the lyrics repeat themselves, and there are only three lyric lines that repeat. In the first stanza it’s long and in the second one it’s short, then long, and then a short stanza again. And there are only a couple examples of rhyme, and there’s not a pattern with that. The lengths are traditional and there is a good amount of punctuation and capitalization.