NEH Summer Teacher Institute 2004 Final Lessons

Government Produced Climate of Fear: A Brave New World Prophecy?

Joanne Krett

Grade level: 12

Discipline: British Literature

Standards addressed

Pennsylvania Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening Standards:

1.1.11 B           Analyze the structure of informational materials explaining how authors used these to achieve their purposes

1.1.11 D            Identify, describe, evaluate and synthesize the essential ideas in text

1.2.11 B           Use and understand a variety of media and evaluate the quality of material produced

1.2.11 F            Read and respond to nonfiction and fiction, including poetry and drama

1.6.11 F            Use media for learning purposes

Create a multi-media (e.g., film, music, computer-graphic) presentation for  display or  transmission that demonstrates and understanding of a specific topic  or  issue or  teachers o hers about it.

History Standards Addressed:

8.1.12 C            Evaluate historical interpretation of events

8.4.12 A           Evaluate the significance of individuals and groups who made major political and cultural contributions to world history since 1450

8.4.12 D          Evaluate how conflict and cooperation among social groups and organizations impacted world history from 1450 to  Present in Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe

Objectives

• Students will analyze and respond to images and metaphors in the song lyrics of “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”
• Students will compare the songs “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” and “Lord Randall” in terms of structure, tone and meaning
• Students will write a song about an historical event or period similar in its effects on society to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

Resources

Song(s) used in lesson:

• “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” performed by Bob Dylan on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,1963. Lyrics are available at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/hardrain.html
• ”Lord Randall” – Traditional Child Ballad. Lyrics are available at http://www.moonwise.com/randal.html

Other resources:

http://somaweb.org/w/sub/Brave%20New%20World%20fulltext.html

On-line text of the novel

http://bobdylan.com/linernotes/freewheelin.html

John Hammond’s liner notes on Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/heroesvillains/jfk/default.htm

interactive website developed by the United Kingdom’s National Archives that asks students to evaluate Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis to determine whether he is a hero or a villain

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/culture/atomic.rock/

a brief, entertaining overview of pop music’s many responses to the threat of nuclear annihilation

http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/cdmuseum2/supply/radkits.html

graph of purchases of radiological defense instruments made by the Department of Defense’s Office of Civil Defense from 1955-1985

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/course/cgi-bin/displayReadingQuizzes.cgi?act=58

on-line, interactive text for the traditional ballad “Lord Randall”

Books

Dylan, Bob. Lyrics, 1962-1985.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf.  1985 

Heylin, Clinton.  Bob Dylan Behind the Scenes, a Biography.  New York: Summit Books.  1991.

Huxley, Aldous.  Brave New World.

Place, Jeff and Ronald D. Cohen.  The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground form the Pages of Broadside Magazine.  Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.  2000. SFW CD 40130.

Thomson, Elizabeth and David Gutman (editors).  The Dylan Companion: A Collecitn of Essential Writing About Bob Dylan. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.  1990.

Song History

“A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” – Bob Dylan

After the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, many people believed that the arms race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. would result in total nuclear annihilation.   In order to prepare citizens for a potential nuclear attack, the civil defense office encouraged Americans to purchase items to stockpile in nuclear fallout shelters in their communities.   In 1962, Bob Dylan wrote a song called “Let me Die in my Footsteps” dealing with the stupidity of  having people go underground into bomb shelters when there were “so many other things they should do in life.”  (Place, p.41) In fact, he was among several protesters in New York City in 1961 who refused to participate in a mandatory civil defense drill.  The song “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is considered by many to be an extension of Bob Dylan’s thoughts on this subject. 

Written in 1963 in direct response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, this is a song “about the psychopathology of peace-through-balance-of-terror”.   Part of his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which contains many anti-military tunes such as “Masters of War”," “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Talkin’ World War III Blues," “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” contains many surreal images that “attempt to describe atomic death from the standpoint of the living.” (Thomson, p.106)

"Hard Rain," says Dylan, "is a desperate kind of song.  Every line in it is actually the start of a whole song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn't have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one." (Hammond) (http://bobdylan.com/linernotes/freewheelin.html)

“Lord Randall” – Traditional Ballad

The earliest printed version of the ballad is in 1787 in The Scots Musical Museum. There it is titled Lord Ronald, my Son. It may have had its roots in an Italian ballad of the 1600s.   The tune is also known as Lord Randall, Jimmy Randal, Jimmy Randolph, Jimmy Ransome, The Croodlin Doo, King Henry, My Son and Tiranti, my love. It is known throughout the British Isles and North America.   The tune Billy Boy is also based on Lord Rendal.  Lord Rendal is Child Ballad #12.

Sir Walter Scott associated the ballad with the death of Thomas Randolph (Randal), Earl of Murray - (or Moray), Robert the Bruce's nephew. Randolph died at Musselburgh in 1332 and some suggested because the death was so untimely for Scotland, it could have been caused by poison.

In The Journal of Folk Song Society (Vol. ii., No. 6 and Vol. iii., No. 10) Miss Gilchrist suggests the identity of Lord Randal is the sixth Earl of Chester, who died in 1232. The said Earl was poisoned by his wife.

According to Burl Ives the tune came to America with followers of Bonnie Prince Charlie who settled in North Carolina after his defeat.  (quoted directly from http://www.contemplator.com/child/rendal.html)

Procedure

Anticipatory Set: (Handout #1)

Display the table on handout on an overhead or give students a copy.  Have students answer the following questions (as a whole class, in pairs or alone):

1.   What do you think radiological defense instruments would be used for?

2.   Why would the department of defense need to purchase them between the years of 1955 and 1965?

3.   What is the most striking statistic in the table?  What might have caused this?

After brief discussion, elicit prior knowledge about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Learning Activity #2

Distribute the handout for Learning Activity #2. View the PowerPoint presentation of images from the Civil Defense Office during the height of the cold war.  Lead students in a discussion of why the government might have used these tactics and what effect these items would have had on society at the time.  Make connections to Brave New World.

PowerPoint presentation: How did government react to the threat of nuclear annihilation in the Post-WWII era?

C:\My Documents\cold war propaganda.zip

Learning Activity #3 - Song Analyses and Comparison

Using the VAT Song Comparison graphic organizer, have students compare and contrast the songs “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” and “Lord Randall”

1.  Distribute lyrics

2.  Read through lyrics to both songs

3.  Listen to “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”

4.  Listen to or sing “Lord Randall”

5.  Allow 15-20 minutes for a think-pair-share activity.  (students work alone first to THINK, work with a  partner to PAIR, then SHARE ideas with the whole group)

Discussion Questions: A Brave New World

1.  Why does Mond advocate the use of non-violent methods to control society (such as genetic engineering and government nurseries that brainwash citizens)?

2.  What, according to Mond, is the connection between consumerism and government?  To what extent do you agree?

3.  Based on your understanding of the Cold War in America in the 50s and 60s, compare and contrast the American government and the fictional one described by Mustapha Mond.

4.  How is this connected to modern government reaction to the terrorist threats now facing western nations? 

5.  What should the role of government be in a world threatened with extinction by its own military power?

Discussion Questions: "Lord Randall"

(questions from http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/course/cgi-bin/displayReadingQuizzes.cgi?act=58)

1. Where has Lord Randall been? Who is concerned about him?

To visit his girlfriend after a hunting trip

His mother

2. How do you picture the setting of this ballad? Where are the main characters? Support your answer with details from the poem

It seems that Randall has just returned home.  They may be in the doorway or on path near his home. He keeps asking his mother to make his bed soon, so they must be home or close to home.

3. What repetition do you notice in this ballad? What effect does it have?

“For I’m weary with hunting and want to lie down” is repeated at the end of the first foru stanzas.  It creates a sort of suspense (to figure out why he’s so weary) as well as fatigue (the repetition lulls the reader into complacency). 

4. Why might the mother be questioning her son in this manner? What do her questions reveal about her feelings for her son?

She’s worried or suspicious.  She obviously dotes on him (my handsome young man, interested in the small details of his visit)

5. Who has poisoned Lord Randall? How do you know?

His “true love” since that’s who he dined with.  We know he’s been poisoned because his hunting dogs died

6. Were you surprised by the final stanza? How is it different from the stanzas before it?

Answers will vary. Stanza five ends with “I’m sick at the heart”.   The change in the line from previous stanzas draws attention to the fact that he’s aware he’s dying.

Discussion Questions: “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”

1. How would you describe the images in this song?

Surrealistic, weird, crazy, worried, apocalyptic

2. Why might Dylan use such strange images?

With the threat of total nuclear annihilation, it seemed to many people like the world had gone crazy

3. What might the “hard rain” represent?

Nuclear fallout

4. How the verb tense switch in the final stanza change the tone of the lyric?

Switching from direct reporting of what has been done, seen, and heard to plans the young man has makes the lyric seem more resolute.  Instead of just telling the strange things he has witnessed, the young man makes a definite plan.  If he’s gonna die anyway, he should go out fighting (connections to Dylan’s favorite poet, Dylan Thomas, who urged his dying father to “fight, fight against the dying of the light?)

5. What does the young man plan to do before the hard rain falls?

Tell, think, speak and breathe what he knows (presumably the truth) to the people who don’t know because they’ve been poisoned.   He knows his song and he will sing it until he dies.

 

Discussion Questions for Both Songs:

1. What strikes you as most similar between these two songs?

The first two lines of every stanza are similar in both songs

2. Why might Dylan use this well-known structure in his song about nuclear annihilation?

Since Lord Randall was poisoned by his lover, Dylan might be suggesting that citizens are poisoned by their governments’ propaganda or lies.  Or he might be echoing the worry the Randall’s mother has with his own worries about the end of the world.

Follow-up learning activities:

• Compare to REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know it (and I feel fine)”
• Look at rain imagery in “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” and John Fogerty’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” (listen to Terri Gross’ Fresh Air interview with John Fogerty by clicking this link: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1149189)
• Respond to Buckminster Fuller’s ideas about eliminating the world’s most pressing problems by using money allocated to military budgets by every government.  See http://reactor-core.org/grunch-of-giants.html

Assessment

Write a song based on the structure of “Lord Randall” which conveys your views on any historical period that produced widespread fear in society.

Assessment criteria and performance descriptors

	Exemplary	Basic	Below Basic
The song mimics the structure of "Lord Randall"	Each stanza begins with repetitive phrases and ends with same line until last stanza Song contains at least five stanzas	Stanzas begin with exact phrasing repeated instead of building up Song only contains between two and four stanzas	No repetition of phrases Song contains only one stanza
The song lyrics reflect a tone of worry or fear based on real historical events	The lyrics build suspense in the listener/reader and draw conclusions about the impact of the historical event	The lyrics are repetitive and don't make any predictions about or draw conclusions from the historical event	The song lyrics do not reference any real historical events that produced widespread fear
The song will contain original imagery to convey its message	Images are based on at least three of the five senses and are fresh or unique	Images are visual only and/or clichéd	No images present