Green Day American Idiot Analysis

For over seventy years America has bought into and celebrated the idea of an American dream. An ideal that sets us apart from all other nations and a story that Americans and immigrants alike have honored for years. This dream has even penetrated its way into pop culture, used by anyone from Toby Keith, to Johnny Cash, to Kanye West to represent their true feelings on America and the dream itself. However, many of these artists fail to capture the whole story with their songs. Despite each of them representing true factors in the dream and American history, biases created by their lives and past block them from being able to recognize the whole story behind the American dream we know today. Green Day, a popular pop punk band is one of those very artists. With one of their latest and most popular albums, American Idiot, they criticize any idea of an American Dream. The album’s featured song American Idiot, written in 2004, is a disapproving to response to the war in Iraq and

He uses his song to instill in his listeners that they should honor their country and the dream they’ve made possible. The song takes place in a somewhat shabby old town, "Is this the first time you've been to our little town?" symbolizing the small town working class of America, the root of what the American dream is built on. Cash also focuses on the perseverance that the American Dream encourages, writing, “Because she's been through the fire before and I believe she can take a whole lot more." Part of what Cash respects and emphasizes is is the persistence of each citizen and country. Yet, throughout Cash’s tribute to America’s wartime, he ignores the grim and dirty details of true war, just as he does in his idea of an American dream. Johnny Cash sees the American Dream as one where anyone from a small town or not, can persevere past any battle that comes towards them, just as America has done throughout