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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 7 page paper discusses Country Joe McDonald’s song “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” and how it reflects the society and issues of the time. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
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Page Count:
7 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVfixdie.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
lyrics to explain the society and time in which it was written. Discussion The song came out in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam war. Like many protest
songs, it used humor and indirection to make its points; that is, rather than coming right out and saying the war is a mistake and the only people enjoying it
are on Wall Street, McDonald let his audiences find the meaning by reading between the lines. Here are three examples of this indirection, where the meaning is clear only
after a person thinks about it. The first example works on several levels: "Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men, / Uncle Sam needs your help again. /
Hes got himself in a terrible jam /Way down yonder in Vietnam / So put down your books and pick up a gun,/ Were gonna have a whole lotta fun"
(McDonald, 1967). There are several things going on here. First, the words "big strong men" seem to be meant ironically, suggesting that all Americans are he-men (in the worst sense
of the word), who value physical strength above everything else. Then he tells listeners that the U.S. has got itself is a mess in Vietnam, but rather than get out
of it, its going to call on young Americans to save the day. We see this today, where instead of using diplomacy and trying to understand the truth of a
situation, the U.S. tends to respond with threats and troops. The next line "so put down your books and pick up a gun" speaks to the fact that not only
were many of the soldiers who went to Vietnam very young, a great many were also college students. It was on the college campuses that the protest movement first started
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