Woody guthrie- a great american.

Essay by sbosirisHigh School, 12th gradeA+, February 2004

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"I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. I am out to fight those kind of songs to my every last breath of air and my last drop of blood."

-Woody Guthrie

Many in my generation do now not know Woody Guthrie yet his songs are still known by nearly every American. "This land is your land" is now considered a very patriotic song. Not many people know of the original purpose for the song. After seeing people's lives after the depression and having heard over and over again Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," Woody got angry. The quote sited about describe his feelings about songs of this nature. He felt that it told workers not to worry and that everything would settle itself when he knew that was not the case at all.

Woody found himself in a fleabag hotel in Times Square writing a song as a cynical response to "God Bless America." A song titled "God Blessed America" in which he would write about the suffering he has seen prom the people. He wrote about his travels, as well private property signs and people standing in front of a relief office. He finished off the piece of notebook paper by clearly writing along the bottom: "All you can write is what you see" and that quote is how Woody wrote all of his songs.

On July 14th, 1912, (Okemah, Oklahoma) mother Nora Guthrie gave birth to a boy which they named Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, after the nominated presidential candidate for the Democratic Party at the time. Father, Charley Guthrie was a member of the Democratic Party and it seems like from birth "Woody" (being...