Student analysis of short text based on these two songs.

1. SHORT TEXT
Level 2 Short Text – Song Lyrics
Theme: rebellion, protest

3. Structured like a letter. Formal, respectful.
Something you do when you want to think
Because we’re not
Dear Mr. President,
Come take a walk with me.
Let's pretend we're just two people and
You're not better than me.
I'd like to ask you some questions if we
can speak honestly.
He thinks he is Because normally he’d lie

4. What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street?
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror?
Are you proud?

5. How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why?

6. Dear Mr. President,
Were you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
How can you say
No child is left behind?
We're not dumb and we're not blind.
They're all sitting in your cells
While you pave the road to hell.
Sending America to hell

7. What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine.
This is the person telling
US what to do? How to
live? What is right?

8. How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say
goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye?
How = repetition
Now questioning his response to the world he created
We’re back to honesty again – just like at the beginning

9. Let me tell you 'bout hard work
This stanza has a different
Minimum wage with a baby on the shape/format
way No more questions – she’s telling him
Let me tell you 'bout hard work now
Rebuilding your house after the The government keeps minimum
bombs took them away wage minimal. Between $6.20 and
Let me tell you 'bout hard work 8.00/hr, except for Wyoming, which
pays 5.15 unless you make tips too,
Building a bed out of a cardboard in which case your employer can
box legally pay you $2.23/hr!
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
(NB The min. wage was $3.25/an
Hard work hour when I was your age in 1983.
Hard work That’s over 25 years ago.
You don't know nothing 'bout hard
Bombs – Iraq/Afghanistan
work
Hard work Cardboard box = homeless
Hard work
Spoilt, privileged child
Oh

10. How do you sleep at night?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Dear Mr. President,
You'd never take a walk with me.
Would you?
In the beginning, she opens a
dialogue. In the end, she
realises that it’s pointless.
He’d never listen. All of our
words fall on deaf ears.

12. Repetition Adjective
Allusion: from the Pledge of Allegiance: “one
nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.”
Don't want to be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America.
FOX. Media by definition is supposed
Chaos caused by fear
to report facts in a fair, impartial
manner. FOX, owned by Rupert
Murdoch, is salacious gossip. Covert, under the radar
Inflammatory vocab; emotive
language

13. Positive connotation, sarcasm Anxiety, worries
Foreign, connotes fear “illegal alien” alliteration
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.
?? They WANT us to be unsettled? YES - war
Verb – since the talking heads are running
the nation, every day is a good day. They
can’t wait to tell new lies.

14. Inflammatory, emotive language again. If
Qualifier you’re not one of the rednecks, you’re clearly
a “fag”
Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along to the age of paranoia.
“redneck” is a pejorative term for lower middle
class, uneducated, stereotypical southern whites.
The are conservative and fundamentally religious.
Popular song line. Propaganda = We’ve had the age of
mainstream media exploits our enlightenment, also called
fears the age of reason. But now…

15. Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

16. Rebelling against society The media controls us – not
ourselves. We are pawns
Repetition of Pledge
Don't want to be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's calling out to idiot America.
Juxtaposition - Not the information age – age of hysteria,
panic, not thinking (but yet “join us, join us”)
Adjective/emotive lang. Change of position! The rest of the
country have all succumbed; they are brain dead.

17. Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

18. How can we connect P!nk and Green Day?

19. Both are:
• modern songs of protest
• are critical of the
presidency/Bush
administration
• created to make audience
think, consider, question
• anti-war?

20. American Idiot is against
the fear of terrorism being
instilled in the public in
order to bring about
agreement on the
continued war in Iraq. It is
loud and in-your-face.
(The ultimate goal of the
Republican party is to bring
capitalism to the world
[which means we are
bringing them the freedom
to buy our stuff].)

21. Dear Mr President is a more
personal lament about domestic
problems that continue as a
result of the war: the billions
going to the military take
funding away from social
programmes that would help
educate, house, feed the
citizens. It is respectful and
considered.