What is the significance of brother can you spare a dime

The lyrics criticize how veterans who had risked their lives for their country were now being treated with so little respect by the country they had served. He was co-owner of an electrical appliance company that went bankrupt shortly after the Great Depression began. His loss was a big gain for American music. Harburg was a strong supporter of socialism. These sympathies made Harburg many enemies who accused him and other socialists of being anti-American.

He was placed on a Hollywood blacklist that banned him from working in the film industry from In , songwriters E. Gorney was basing the music on a lullaby he remembered from his childhood in Russia. He set the tune mostly in a minor key, one that suggests a sense of sadness and loss. A young man approached Gorney, his collar turned up and his hat pulled low. Popular crooners Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee both recorded versions of it and the song blew the top off the music charts.

For the first time since the Great Depression began, it seemed, someone had put words and music to what many Americans were feeling—fear, grief, even anger. The song itself, though, angered some rich and powerful Americans. Pro-business leaders believed the tune was a dangerous attack on the American economic system. They tried to ban it from Broadway and block it from being played on the radio. Music, movies, family, and government aid helped people get through this dark period.

The Great Depression, though, dragged on for more than ten years. Every song has a story about why it was written. Now he can't accept the fact that the bubble has burst. He still believes. He still has faith. He just doesn't understand what could have happened to make everything go so wrong. While it certainly doesn't represent all the diverse experiences of Americans during the Great Depression, it makes sense that the character in "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The economy of was in the midst of a downward spiral, and the costs came not just in numbers, but in real human suffering: joblessness, homelessness, starvation, and a loss of morale nationwide.

People like the song's narrator who had put their whole lives into building a nation they truly believed in were left out in the cold, standing in bread lines or begging for relief. Those who had been well off before the economy fell apart felt shock, disillusionment, confusion, and sometimes anger.

The U. Still, according to a Pew Center report released in , the general public still had a relatively positive outlook during the Depression. As we all know, in the U. In late , the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and subsequent bankruptcy of several of the country's biggest banks caused huge problems.

Money stopped funneling into businesses and new projects as investors pulled out or froze their assets; people and businesses stopped borrowing money.

As a result, jobs disappeared overnight, sometimes in massive numbers. I wanted to write a song to make people think. The song asks why the men who built the nation — built the railroads, built the skyscrapers — who fought in the war, who tilled the earth, who did what their nation asked of them should, now that the work is done and their labor no longer necessary, find themselves abandoned and in bread lines.

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob, When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job. They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead, Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread? One song embodies the Great Depression in American popular culture. Bing Crosby, as many others, sang it. The song stages a man, probably unemployed.

He tells his story in order to justify why he is begging for money. He is unemployed, not because he does not want to find a job or does not have the skills for work, but because there is no job for him. In American mentalities, a work defines a man and integrated him in a community.

It creates a link of brotherhood between them, and may refers to a religious vocabulary. This man is also a metaphor of the public, he embodies it. But there is a double reception : the public can recognize him also into the narrator itself.

I shall give a little analysis of the three verses. My line of analysis will follow the structure of the song itself which is built around an opposition between good old days and current days and as a result conveys a strong impress of disillusion.