Analysis Of Billy Joel's Song We Didn T Start The Fire
In the hit song “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel, it states historical events from 1949 to 1989 that impacted the world completely. There are over one hundred topics spoken of in the span of the song, including political and entertainment events. Although they are all individual topics, some actually relate to others, or even lead up to the next. Some of these topics include North Korea, South Korea, Panmunjom (1949-1952), Malenkov, Khrushchev (1953- 1956), Little Rock, Ole Miss (1957 and 1962) punk rock, and heavy metal suicide (1974-75 and 1984-91). These specific topics are related to each other in some way, but altogether have made a large impact on the United States in their era and in the modern era as well. Two specific topics
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The abstract idea of the use of Little Rock in the song was to highlight the crisis taking place in 1957, when a group of young African- American students (as known as the Little Rock 9), were denied and prevented from entering a segregated high school. This event actually happened 3 years after the Brown v. Education, which was a Supreme Court case that ruled segregation in public school systems unconstitutional. Ole Miss was a similar case of the Little Rock 9, where James Meredith became the first African- American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, which resulted in a riot between Southern segregationists and government officials. These two topics relate to each other because they both featured a moment of violation of the constitution, which stated segregation situations like the ones stated in the lyrics of the song are unconstitutional. The conflicts both have had government actions taken to reassure the historical African-American students were going to go further than what they came for. These topics relate to U.S history due to the fact that these events triggered a new evolution of equality among race, resulting in boycotts, powerful speeches, and much more that involved the movement of the American soil. These events both came to symbolize both massive resistance to social change and the government’s commitment to enforcing African-American civil
The abstract idea of the use of Little Rock in the song was to highlight the crisis taking place in 1957, when a group of young African- American students (as known as the Little Rock 9), were denied and prevented from entering a segregated high school. This event actually happened 3 years after the Brown v. Education, which was a Supreme Court case that ruled segregation in public school systems unconstitutional. Ole Miss was a similar case of the Little Rock 9, where James Meredith became the first African- American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, which resulted in a riot between Southern segregationists and government officials. These two topics relate to each other because they both featured a moment of violation of the constitution, which stated segregation situations like the ones stated in the lyrics of the song are unconstitutional. The conflicts both have had government actions taken to reassure the historical African-American students were going to go further than what they came for. These topics relate to U.S history due to the fact that these events triggered a new evolution of equality among race, resulting in boycotts, powerful speeches, and much more that involved the movement of the American soil. These events both came to symbolize both massive resistance to social change and the government’s commitment to enforcing African-American civil