Give Peace A Chance

Olivia Bowman, Stephanie Dryer,

Mark Hultz, Morgan Stoltz, and Kylie Sparks

The meaning behind Give Peace A Chance by John Lennon, is greatly

opinionated and varied between each reader. The time period for this song

was during the Cold War as well as the Vietnam War. This whole piece is

basically telling the story of how life was in the time it was written. Most

people felt trapped by the society and afraid of being themselves. The song

also supported the idea of the civil rights movements. The song starts off by

giving you examples of the different topics that everybody was talking about

in that time period.

Throughout, it talks about people going against the societys rules. As

you go through it says many different peoples names that do not come up

very often, but actually had a large impact on their society. They encouraged

going against the rules and expressing yourself. For one example used in the

song is Alan Ginsberg who was a famous beat poem author describing how

being unique and going on your own path was needed to make society

better. Alan would have been a great supporter of the civil rights movement.

Beat poetry was influenced by jazz music that was predominately played by

African Americans.

Another point used, dealt with religion. Its basically contradicting the

choices people were making that went against the bible. The churchs point

of view was, they wanted peace also but did not think some of the rebellious

acts were necessary. African American churchs supported the ways that

were being fought for civil rights and peace.

 Give Peace A Chance
Olivia Bowman, Stephanie Dryer,
Mark Hultz, Morgan Stoltz, and Kylie Sparks

With all of the negativity in this time period, the purpose of this song

was to try and promote peace. They wanted peace because they were

surrounded by war. The United Nations were not doing a good job at keeping

the peace with the others. The first word he uses is Bagism, which is

supposed to be dealing with peace. It was a campaign made up by John

Lennon as well as Yoko Ono. They wanted to let everyone know that we

didnt need to fight all the time because of differences between one another.