| Edwin Starr – War Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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My interpretation of "War"-Edwin Starr This is a protest song about the Vietnam War, although it makes a broader statement of the need for harmony in our everyday lives. Starr makes a very strong political stance in the opening, where he blatantly states that the beautiful land is not worth the controversy of war. There is a sense of unease as he suggests that people are blindsided by its beauty and will do anything, including fighting a war, to fulfill their greed. The song emphasizes that children are either lured into the battlefield and killed or survive snd become "disabled, bitter, and mean", which implies that war only ends in tragedy. He does this while questioning the audience whether or not young lives are worth the " beautiful land" in order to really get them to think about the consequences of war. This resembles today's society in the sense that people need to come to terms with each other and find ways other than violence to solve conflicts, because violence only perpetuates violence. These lines in particular demonstrate how humans lack the ability to see how violence can affect others beyond themselves. There is a slight shift as Starr considers that a person would fight voluntarily, abandoning the suggestion that people are only lured in unwillingly. He says that a person would fight out of "patriotism", but not in an abstract manner as most people do--with specific people in mind. He ignores his uncertainty and immediately resorts to singing the chorus as if such reasoning is invalid. Starr repeats the chorus many times to convince the audience (and perhaps himself) that war is not inevitable, especially when he says "listen to me now". His passion sense of urgency grew each time he sang the chorus, especially while more people chanted in agreement. |
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