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We Didn T Start The Fire Rhetorical Devices

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While the Berlin Wall was being torn down and NASA was launching a new spacecraft into the atmosphere, Billy Joel released one of the most controversial singles of his career. “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, premiered in 1989 and immediately became a hit with not only the nation, but the world. The one-hundred and eighteen historical words he manipulated to form a catchy pop hit helped him emphasize his deeper meaning behind the purpose of the song. That purpose, was to explain the truths behind history placed in the word choice he used. The truth that his generation, known as the Baby Boomers, were used as a scapegoat for society to blame for how history transpired during their existence. Billy Joel’s single represents the history from his birth to the late 80’s, when it released, using rhetorical tools to emphasize that it is not his generation’s fault the world was on fire. Billy Joel begun his career with his first album in 1971. It was not until he released his hits like “Piano Man” and “Captain Jack”, that he begun to gain credibility and a …show more content…

Truman, who was president of the United States at the time, called for troops to aid the South Koreans. Panmunjom, Korea is also a reference used in the song which is the location where North Korea and the United Nations negotiated for ending the war. Even though the war was left in a stalemate, it had a great impact on America and its people. A war that did not end in a stalemate was the Vietnam War. The country split into a communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam. America fought to contain communism, so the US invaded Vietnam in hopes of suppressing North Vietnam and their spread of communism. Ho Chi-Mehn is the leader of the North Vietnamese, who led the battle against the United States and the French. While war was an important topic for Billy Joel to emphasize, the wars within the US were an equally crucial

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283 Words | 2 Pages

Walter Dean Myers once stated that “One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict.” The Vietnam War, fought in 1955 to 1975, was the longest war in American history. This war was a conflict between the Communist North Vietnam and its ally Viet Cong, and South Vietnam and its ally the United States. During the Vietnam war, tensions in the United States were extremely high.

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429 Words | 2 Pages

Kira Bender Mrs. Dafoe APEL: Period 4 15 September 2014 Bradstreet Rhetorical Précis In her poem, “Upon the Burning of Our House (1666),” Anne Bradstreet, the first female writer in the British North American colonies to be published, employs the capitalization of specific words and a shift in point of view in order to inform us of a situation in which her devotion to God was challenged and yet consequentially strengthened. Bradstreet opens her poem with the burning down of her home and the amount of fear it caused her. She then gives thanks to God, since she believes all things are his and he has the right to take what he wants.

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1525 Words | 7 Pages

The Vietnam War was fought between the North and South Vietnamese over Communism. The North pushed for a communist regime while the South favored a more democratic government. During the time of this war, the U.S. was pushing towards containing Communism, and vowed to support any nation resisting communism. Although America’s policy of containment had good intentions, this often led to the support of corrupt leaders and governments. President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam was Catholic and did not lead well.

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155 Words | 1 Pages

The soldiers in the Vietnam war hated their involvement and many questioned why the united states stepped in the first place. According to Robert Peterson, “I guess I’m fighting for the continued freedom and prosperity of America. But then when i think about it, that doesn 't make much sense either….. To stop communism here or they’ll eventually take over America. That’s a bunch of… bullshit!

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917 Words | 4 Pages

The Vietnam War is known as the first war America “lost.” The loss of lives was a devastating number. The American government was very secretive as to their plans in Vietnam. Although President Johnson said that the US had no desire to get involved in the war, he and close government officials prepared in case they truly needed to go to war. The public was eased into a false sense of security.

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2557 Words | 11 Pages

The Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, was one of the most divisive and controversial conflicts in American history. It was a military conflict between the Communist North Vietnam, and South Vietnam, with the United States and other Western powers supporting the Southern Vietnamese. The war was fought in the context of the Cold War because the United States feared that Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia if North Vietnam managed to take control of the entire country. The war had such a profound impact on American society, and still remains a subject of intense debate and analysis today. After World War I, Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, expressed many grievances against the French colonialists.

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1556 Words | 7 Pages

Contextualization and introduction The Vietnam War served as a major turning point of the Cold War, during which the American public split in its support of the conflict. As a proxy in the superpower conflict between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR), the US entered to support the South Vietnamese who were at war against the communist North. To support the South and its Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the United States sent military advisory, conducted airstrikes, and committed ground forces with the hope of curbing the growth of communist ideology in the Asian sphere of influence through a communist defeat.

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496 Words | 2 Pages

The Vietnam war was preceded by a very turbulent time in our history with problems here in the states such as racism, women’s rights, and a president being shot. But in Vietnam they were going through a civil war, which they had done before, but not to this extent, this time they got the U.S.S.R. involved. It was communist Russia and North Vietnam against South Vietnam. The U.S. started to get

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808 Words | 4 Pages

In The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, the author uses aphorisms, deductive reasoning, and a particular use of pronouns to appeal to the reader’s emotions. His purpose is to persuade the reader to agree with him, and he does this by creating a common enemy using these techniques. He appeals to the reader’s emotions, making them feel like a victim of society, and then offering condolence and support. Baldwin uses aphorisms to appeal to the reader’s emotions and persuade them into agreeing with him.

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1524 Words | 7 Pages

The war in Vietnam to do this day has gone down as one of the influential and controversial wars in United States history. The war lasted from 1955 to 1975.The nation as a whole began to uproar over the war and the major consequences of the war. There were many reasons why so many Americans were against the war. Public opinion steadily turned against the war following 1967 and by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. had not made a mistake by sending troops to fight in Vietnam (Wikipedia). Not to mention, many young people protested because they were the ones being drafted while others were against the war because the anti-war movement grew increasingly popular among the counterculture and drug culture in American society and

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674 Words | 3 Pages

Argumentative Essay In “To Build a Fire,” the story of an unnamed man traveling along the Yukon Trail with a dog is told. Throughout the story, the man’s death is foreshadowed. The husky that he is traveling with has a natural instinct and understands, seemingly more than the man, that traveling the Yukon Trail in the freezing cold temperatures is extremely dangerous. The man soon learns how cold it is when he spits.

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1796 Words | 8 Pages

In retrospect, however, the United States should not have entered the war. Not being a part of the war would have saved American lives and money, potentially eliminated PTSD in a generation on soldiers, and would have prevented the animosity that exist between the United States and North Korea that dominates the headlines today. The Korean War was fought between two major wars, Word War II and the Vietnam War. Due to being fought between these major wars, the Korean War is known as “The Forgotten War.” The Korean War started on June 25, 1950 and ended July 23, 1953.

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1722 Words | 7 Pages

A sacred belief around the world is that loyalty to one’s family is of the uppermost importance relative to any group. Despite this concept appearing pure, moral values and family loyalty often conflict, given the reality that relatives often make choices opposite of what another’s moral values may suggest. In “Barn Burning”, the main character Sartoris Snope is torn between these two concepts, morality and loyalty, as his father Abner Snope is a serial arsonist plagued with a short temper. Moving from town to town and landlord to landlord, Sartoris begins to battle with whether or not to support his father’s actions, eventually building to the climax of the story in which his decision leads to the demise of a main character. Author William Faulkner seeks to demonstrate that one’s own moral values are of paramount importance when compared to family loyalty through Abner’s hostile dialogue, indirectly characterizing Abner’s immature and violent nature, contrasting such characteristics against Lennie’s moral positions, Sartoris’s dynamic development, and Sartoris’s actions in the climax of the piece.

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550 Words | 3 Pages

Rural life during the early 20th century was “considered” safe with close personal ties to morals, all of which family values being at the core of American culture. This new heritage launched a joint effort after World War I to restrain the trends they found threatening and reinstate the traditional American values for which it once stood for. Prohibition, being seen as purging the nation of the evilness of city life after World War 1was favored in rural areas; helped spark what was known as the Sexual Revolution. In his literary work Spoon River Anthology (1915), Edgar Lee Masters stripped away the once rigid customs and traditions of American life in rural America.

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1077 Words | 5 Pages

After World War II, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union increased as the nations competed for superiority and domination during the Cold War. The USSR’s growing power and communist influence over smaller nations frightened the United States and ignited a strong fear of further communist expansion. These fears became a reality with the emergence of the Viet Minh, a revolutionary communist force created to oppose tyrannical French colonialism, which ultimately pressured the United States to take action and bring democracy to Vietnam. The historical novel, The Quiet American, serves as an allegory to the struggle between communist Viet Minh forces in the North and French-controlled South Vietnam towards the end of the First

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