Brother Can You Spare A Dime Analysis

Brother, can you spare a dime?

The cold, winter air burst through my thin blanket as easily as one moves. The ugly fog covers everything as far as the eye can see. It chokes you and blinds you to the point of no return, but worst of all, it removes all hope from your body, almost as if it sucks the very life out. The frozen, hard concrete bites against my head and the cold gnaws away my feet. Life is at an all time low.

Tonight, I sleep in a train station, yesterday I slept in the outskirts of a wood, tomorrow who knows where I sleep. Every night when the wafting clouds come over my head in the dark sky, however, I think it as a success. As the sun sets over the buildings, I begin to reminisce, back to my life in the army and on this very night I think it would have been a better to

stay in the trenches than here. Back then, I was different, I was full of hope. Not only that, but I was respected. My fellow members respected me, my family at home respected me and those who saw me without even knowing me respected me. Now there is not a soul in the world who respects me, everyone discards me as a piece of trash or an unwanted disease. I also desperatly miss the order of the army, how you would be punished if you were out of line or sync. I always thought that a life without law and order would be a luxury but now I realise it was all fantasy. The most that I miss thought were the quiet evenings, though. When there were no blazing guns occupying all vision and sound, I would just lie down and stop everything from having an effect on me. Pensively, I would picture my life in a different scenario every night. I don't think that under any circumstances I thought about living life in the hell that I live in now.

After my time as an army man, I was approached by a man who I assumed could change the world and could clearly change my life.

I was offered a job as a builder. I instantly took it because I wanted a different scenario and I felt this was the way. For the next ten years, I spent my life building a skyscraper that I was informed would be one of the tallest around. I was once again, I was respected by my fellow man and once again when someone ambled by me, they would not discard me, they would greet me and make conversation with me. For this time period I spent my life in a small but elegant house living with my wife who I met working as a nurse in World War I. As I watched the building climb higher and higher up the horizon, I began once again to picture my life in the future. This time it was different. My imagination took me along the path of wealth and I pictured big houses, fountains, servants but most of all my wife by my side. Every night we would feast on the glorious three course meals coming from inside the kitchen. At the time I did not think that I could be optimising the future but later, I found out my life would turn out much worse than I could possibly have

imagined.

Then it happened. October 24th 1929. When I first heard about it, I thought there was a mistake and then I thought I was dillusional. Horribly, nevertheless, the incident that convinced me was the worst occurrence of my life. It all happened within an instant. Watching my beautiful wife jump out of the window and fall to her bloody death was abhorrent and repulsive. I had to witness it. The impact was like a rock hitting the floor, it just broke into pieces and never came back up again. She had confessed to me she had started to invest in the stock market but I never imagined how bad it actually was. After that fateful day, however, my life descended into darkness. I was told I could no longer work and I was forced to sell my house. As the months drained by and my money drastically dropped, my living conditions gradually got worse aswell until the point where I was out on the street, looking for whatever possible shelter there was to find.

But I am not to blame. No. It is only the government to blame. They took me in, manipulated me and then spat me out onto the street when I was no longer needed. Now, there is no respect from anyone. I sit and importune some of the army men (some of which I know) for nothing but a dime, but I am usually just welcomed with a spit or an angry look or worst, I am not discerned. Now, there is no family of mine, no grand house, just a grotesque, repugnant building that was snatched away from me and now, under the very foundation I built, I receive nothing from sitting there and asking, “Brother, can you spare a dime?”