Harper Nicole Anderson's Analysis of Lennon's "Imagine"

A Poet's Prophecy for Peace
Copyright 2012 Harper Nicole Anderson
University of California Berkeley

footsteps in the fog
a pathway
lined with trees
emerges
a couple walks
hand in hand
a tall man
in a dark fake fur jacket
wide brimmed hat
uggish boots, gloves
a diminutive woman
a dark overcoat covering her ankle length white dress
they walk hand in hand
we follow
birds chirping echoing the footsteps
a clearing
still they walk
a piano
playing
a sweet and simple melody
a man sings
imagine
there’s no heaven
it’s easy if you try
still the two walk
no hell below us
above us only sky
we follow them
we cannot help but follow them
it is said
they have a message
for all of us
the couple walks
the man sings
imagine all the people
living for today
a drum kicks
a bass guitar rumbles
now in the clearing
the two walk
a white mansion
the man his arm
around the woman
as they stand
at the door
white marble columns
busts of greek gods
this
is
not
here
the couple disappears
they have a message
for everyone
imagine there's no countries
it isn't hard to do
nothing to kill or die for
and no religion too
a wide white salon
every thing is white
in this
large
white room
white carpet
white curtains
white ceiling
far off
a white grand piano
the man sings
you may say that I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
the woman in the white dress
opens the white curtain
white light shines in
behind the piano
opening the next curtain
more light
white light
suddenly
we see the man
he is handsome
brownish curlish
longish hair
lines his soft face
tinted rimless glasses
cover his soulful
brown eyes
his small girlish mouth
sings
i hope someday you'll join us
and the world will be as one
camera is pulled back
the woman opens
the other curtains
more light
the woman walks
elegantly
to the man
at the white piano
the woman sits
with the man
stoic
black hair
adorned
white head band
white beads
the man sings
soulfully
imagine no possessions
i wonder if you can
no need for greed or hunger
a brotherhood of man
the woman stares
almost sadly
you
may say
that I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
i hope someday you'll join us
the man’s head turns for approval
the woman’s eyes nod
and the world will live as one
a drum kicks
the music ends
again the man turns his head
for
approval
the woman stares
a soft smile
a kiss

Over the past eleven months or so, the world has witnessed a new awakening. As I began writing this, the internet was buzzing over the news that Libyan dictator Gadhafi had been killed, another dictator gone as a result of the “Arab spring” movement that began to emerge last December. In the United States and around the world, tens of thousands are protesting against Wall Street. Just the other day, the movement was jolted by the news of an unforgiveable life-threatening injury administered by police to an Iraq War veteran and protestor at an Occupy Oakland demonstration. “Occupy” protestors call themselves 99 percenters in response to the notion that 1% of the people control 99% of the wealth. A class discussion last week tossed around the question of whether or not Occupy Wall Street will work, an interesting question but I see a larger issue. I see the “occupy” movement as a larger, worldwide movement that is just beginning to gel. A society in which less than 1% control most of the wealth and pay less in taxes than the rest of us who struggle just to keep a roof over head and food on the table cannot endure. Of course, if the world’s “richest” country experiences this type of inequality; can we even begin to comprehend how bad it must be in the rest of the world? But people are beginning to rise up everywhere. This apparently burgeoning world unity may be what John Lennon envisioned when he wrote “Imagine.”
Although I am buoyed by the change in dialogue that the Occupy Wall Street Movement has already accomplished, I feel a certain sadness as I continue to view the video of John and Yoko that I attempted to describe in free form above. In a sense, I feel that I have such an emotional attachment to this song and to John and Yoko that I am totally incapable of presenting a rational analysis of this work. Perhaps because of this strong emotional connection, I have experienced an undue amount of vacillation as to what method I will use to analyze “Imagine.”
After much consideration, I decided to use both a cluster and metaphor criticism of the song lyric but as I do not see a cluster criticism working for the video, that analysis will be solely a metaphorical one. Narrative criticism does not fit simply because there is not much of a narrative in the song. Pentadic would work but the message of the song is not such a complex one that a complex method needs to be used. Generic criticism would work also as--even though my rather biased view of this song is that it is unique and it claims its own genre-- a contrast could be drawn between “Imagine” and other so-called protests songs such as Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They are A-Changin’” Buffy Saint-Marie’s “Universal Soldier” or even Lennon‘s “Give Peace a Chance.” Now that my method has been chosen, a brief explanation of cluster and metaphor criticism is in order.
Before describing cluster criticism, devised by Kenneth Burke, who, according to Sonja Foss, author of Rhetorical Criticism, Exploration and Practice, was a “specialist in symbol-systems and symbolic action,” I must admit that I do not fully understand Burke’s “system.” (63) However, I take comfort in knowing that at least one of Burke’s former students, James Cox, even after being a lifelong follower of Burke, similarly had been “lost in what seemed the maze of terms and categories.” (Cox ) The task of the rhetorician using the cluster method involves isolating “what subjects cluster about other subjects.” Because the rhetor cannot consciously be aware of the interrelationships among all the clusters, this investigation may unearth hidden meaning. Burke says, according to Foss, a “cluster analysis provides a survey of the hills and valleys of the rhetor’s mind.” (66)
The first step in cluster criticism, Foss writes, is “to collect the key terms in the artifact.” Find the “most significant terms” which are those “that appear the most frequently” and those that are the “most intense.” Foss points to Bush’s use of “evil” in his post-911 speeches as being an example of a particularly intense term. (66)
After selecting the key terms, Foss suggests that the rhetorician “chart the clusters around those key terms.” Rhetoricians may select terms that by “proximity” or by seeing a “cause and relationship between a key term and another term.” (66)
The final step in the process of analysis is to “find patterns in the linkages and associations” discovered in the charting of clusters. Foss suggests that this charter clustering creates a “a kind of dictionary” for the rhetor’s key terms. Now, let us look at metaphor criticism.
“Metaphors,” Sonja Foss writes, “are nonliteral comparisons in which the word or phrase from one domain of experience is applied to another domain. Foss explains that metaphors bring together “two terms normally regarded as belonging to different classes of experience.” “The two terms or to parts of the of a metaphor are called the tenor and the vehicle. For example, in the metaphor, “all the world is a stage.” “World” is the tenor, the “topic or subject,” while “stage” is the vehicle, the “lens” through which the topic or subject is viewed. (Foss 267)
Before beginning my analysis, a brief background of the rhetors is in order. John Lennon, composer and singer of Imagine, is perhaps best known as a founding member, along with Paul McCartney, of the Beatles. With McCartney, Lennon penned some of the twentieth century’s most memorable pop songs such “Yesterday,” “Let It Be” and the haunting “Eleanor Rigby.” The Beatles catalogue remains in such high demand that owners of the copyrights were able to bypass digital marketing of the product by not making them unavailable for digital download until just recently.
John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940 and was gunned down by a madman Mark David Chapman in 1980 just outside his Manhattan home. According to biographer Anthony DeCurtis, Lennon suffered a traumatic childhood, abandoned by his father and virtually ignored by his mother Julia, he was raised by Julia’s sister Mimi and her husband George, who died in a car accident when John was seventeen. DeCurtis posits that the true character of John Lennon did not begin to emerge until the seventies, after the breakup of the Beatles in 1970 and a period in which “avant-garde artist” Yoko Ono became more of an influence. (DeCurtis)
Some say Lennon’s marriage to Yoko Ono had precipitated the breakup of the Beatles and others have criticized Ono’s involvement in his music. However, it is almost certain that he would have never written Imagine without the influence of Yoko Ono and if it is true that Yoko “broke up” the Beatles then , as Lennon told Dick Cavett, she is responsible for all the great songs that have come out since the Beatles broke up. (youtube.com) Yoko Ono continues to day to work for world peace, among other things, maintaining the website imaginepeace.com: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” (imaginepeace.com)
As part of the research for this paper, I was asked to identify other academic treatments of my artifact, entering “John Lennon” “Imagine” into Ebsco host, I found 642 relevant academic journals, I found the following to be most relevant: “Imagining Strawberry Fields” by Robert Kruse which examines “the significance of Strawberry Fields, the memorial to John Lennon in Central Park, New York City.” The work investigates the “postmodern conceptualizations of secular pilgrimage;” “Pop and Avant-Garde: The Case of John and Yoko,” by Jon Wiener “presents views on popular and avant-garde music based on the case of musician John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono; “McCartney at 60: A Body of Work Celebrating Home and Hearth,” by J.M. Dempsey, which, among other thing, looks at McCartney’s “comparison with singer and composer John Lennon.” All three of these papers warrant comment.
Dempsey’s “McCartney at 60” reveals several insights juxtaposing McCartney and Lennon’s style that deserve mention. While Lennon, unlike McCartney --“not a person who has suffered from extreme angst”-- was lauded for “courageous personal revelation” in romantic songs such a “Jealous Guy” and “Love” written for Yoko Ono, “McCartney was not perceived as honestly writing about his own emotions in love songs to his own wife such as ‘Maybe I’m Amazed,’ and ‘My Love.’ (28) Dempsey also brings up the conundrum of aging rock musicians who can no longer depend on channeling the “anger, frustration, and youthful energy” form which rock music springs according to “popular theory.” (31) Unlike McCartney, Lennon turned to his evolving sense of social justice in writing Imagine. In my view, as someone who has lived through the Civil Rights and Vietnam War Eras, social conscience increases with age.
In “Pop and Avant-Garde: The Case of John and Yoko, “ Jon Weiner not only paints a fascinating portrait of rock music’s most famous couple but also provides intriguing insights into the genre itself. Weiner rejects the view that rock represents a rebellion against “capitalist hegemony” as commoditization and the “passive consumption” of the product contributes significantly to that hegemony. However, Weiner argues that John Lennon challenged the “capitalist colonization of youth culture” by embracing the influence of “avant-garde art, the opposite pole of culture in a capitalist society” and a “form of intervention which recognizes the repressed, the neglected [and] unreconciled.” (Weiner 2) Saying that the commodity of pop music “fosters stupidity in listening,” Weiner proposes that “the avant-garde has the imagination to challenge passivity and stupidity,” and that John and Yoko at least attempted to “challenge bourgeois hegemony over the pop audience” by employing the “strategies of the avant-garde.”
Weiner contributes a concise yet revealing biographical sketch of Yoko Ono and her ties to the New York avant-garde scene. Born in Japan in 1933, Ono “moved to New York with her family when she was seventeen.” She attended Sarah Lawrence College but left before she graduated and began organizing “loft concerts in Lower Manhattan in 1959.” In 1961, she “gave a concert of conceptual music at Carnegie Hall,” after which a “New York Times reviewer spelled her name incorrectly as Yoko One.” In 1964, she became involved with the “international conceptual art group Fluxus,” again appearing at Carnegie Hall and later being part of a “Fluxfest.” She met Lennon in 1966 after coming to London to show her work. Ono “wrapped the lion at Trafalgar Square a year before Christo wrapped his first piece.” While in London, she performed with Ornette Coleman at Royal Albert Hall. (Weiner 4) After detailing many of Ono’s accomplishments, endeavors overlooked by the mainstream press, Weiner details Lennon’s ties to the art world, mentioning that the singer-composer attended art school. (Weiner 5)
After contributing details of John and Yoko’s infamous “bed-in,” Weiner documents Lennon’s “pre-imagine” influence on the antiwar movement, noting that the movement had found its anthem in the Plastic Ono Band’s “Give Peace a Chance.” In 1969, Lennon “undertook one other project seeking to bring radical politics together with his music.” In 1968, “students in Paris had raised the slogan ‘Power to the Imagination’” which Weiner points to as inspiration for Imagine but Rolling Stone writer David Fricke credits a Yoko Ono book for laying the groundwork for the song.
In fact, the origins of “Imagine” go back to the very dawn of Beatlemania, to Ono's life before Lennon and her conceptual art of the early 1960s. In her book Grapefruit, first published in Tokyo in 1964, Ono wrote a series of enigmatic instructions for paintings and musical compositions, works that literally began with acts of imagination: “Imagine letting a goldfish swim across the sky” (“Drinking Piece for Orchestra”);“Imagine your body spreading rapidly all over the world like thin tissue” (“Rubber Piece”). (Fricke)

Regardless, given the “simplicity and clarity of the lyric,” Weiner wonders why so many critics misunderstood it, noting that a New York Times reviewer called it “irrational” as if “our world of greed and hunger is more rational.” (Weiner, 13) Before leaving this topic, it is important to clarify Yoko Ono’s contribution to Imagine: “We were two artists living together,” Ono told Fricke. “We influenced each other. He wrote the song, but ‘Imagine’ was a manifesto for both of us.” (Fricke) Now let us take a brief look at “Imagining Strawberry Fields.”



Fig. 1 Strawberry Fields Forever Memorial, Central Park, New York (americantalesandtrails.com)

I took the name as an image . . . Strawberry Fields was . . . an old Victorian house converted for Salvation Army orphans, and as a kid I used to go to their garden parties with my friends . . . We’d all go up there and hang out an lemonade bottles for a penny and we always had fun at Strawberry Fields. (Kruse 156)


In “Imagining Strawberry Fields,” geographer Robert Kruse describes the Central Park memorial to John Lennon as a “place of cultural pilgrimage” (Kruse 154) and notes the Lennon’s song Imagine is integral to the Lennon memorial.” Kruse notes that since 9/11, the song has become a national hymn, “a material manifestation on the cultural landscape. The song, in that sense, is also a place that can be visited in solitude or communion.”
Before sporting events in the Unites States and in other countries, the national anthem is sung. I still feel a sense of pride when I witness and often join in singing Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner” at baseball games. On the other hand, I usually try to either ignore or turn the sound down on my television when yet another off-key version of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” is performed, as has been the tradition since 9/11, during the seventh inning of baseball games. “God Bless America,” of course, is a popular song written during the First World War and has become somewhat of an unofficial national anthem. I rather dislike the song but Woody Guthrie detested it and wrote “This Land is Your Land” in response. (Wikipedia) Nevertheless, “God Bless America, not “This Land is Your Land” is sung at baseball games which leads to my research question:
What devices can a modern songwriter use to create a song that could become an anthem for new generations?
Cluster criticism requires that the rhetorician first identify major themes or terms around which other ideas cluster. The three verses—the chorus deserves its own analysis--contain but one term “imagine” that constitutes its major theme. Clustering around imagine are terms that represent, in Lennon’s view, failed institutions of the current world order: government, the military, organized religion “no heaven…no hell…no country…living for today…nothing to kill or die for…” and “…no religion.” Also clustering around “imagine” are terms which suggest that Lennon would replace the current world order with “all the people” “brotherhood of man” “sharing all the world,” “no greed or hunger” and “living life in peace.” The other clustering concept is that imagining this new world order, which critics may dismiss as a Utopian pipedream, is not hard to do: “it’s easy if you try…it isn’t hard to do.” So there are the three clustering concepts: rejection of failed institutions, establishing a new world order and the ease with which we can imagine this happening. Before looking at the main term “imagine” Let us explore the ease in doing this.
Lennon asks us—“us” being presumably everyone in the world-- in the verses to only imagine this happening and says this is easy to do. If all we are expected to do is to imagine this better world, I would assume that most would agree that this is easy to do. But what is it to imagine?
Of all the words in the English language, the notion of imagination may be one which relates most to the core of what it means to be human especially if one concerns herself with concepts outside of human emotions such as love and hope. To imagine is to dream. To conceive. To envision. To visualize. To see in one’s mind’s eye. “Imagination precedes action.” In David Fricke’s excellent retrospective of Imagine published in Rolling Stone after the 30th anniversary of the song’s release, U2’s Bono is quoted as saying that “what he really liked” was “the Buddhist core of the song, the idea that imagination precedes action, that you imagine something before you make it true.” (Fricke) So what is that the rhetor wants us to imagine, what do the clusters tell us?
The first group of clusters, as stated above, deals with Lennon asking us to reject the old world order first with the rhetor quite literally tells us to reject religion, the concept of eternal reward or damnation and that we should reject these myths and live for today. Lennon apparently believes as I do that many of humankind’s most despicable acts have been conducted under the flag of organized religious dogma. The Inquisition comes to mind as well as Biblical justifications for slavery and racism. Furthermore, rejecting the “pie in the sky when you die” myth will, presumably, lead people to seek a better life here on earth but how exactly do we do that? Certainly not by imposing our “goodwill” militarily and by nation-building and our endless war on terror as we do now, Lennon suggests a better way.
What does Lennon mean by “no country?” If taken literally, “no country” could be interpreted as anarchy and certainly, Lennon is not promoting anarchy. I suggest that, although much of Lennon’s anthem can be taken verbatim, this is the one concept that is a complete metaphor. “No country” simply means that we reject nationalism: “loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.” (Miriam-webster.com) Lennon is not suggesting that we eliminate government but reject the kind of nationalism manifested in Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Fascism or the United States’ endless War on Terror. The lack of nationalism is the “nothing” Lennon refers to when saying we no longer will have anything “to kill or die for.”
The “brotherhood of man” “sharing all the world,” “no greed or hunger” “no possessions” and “living life in peace” clusters suggest a new world order in which all the people would join together, share the wealth peacefully which would, presumably, end greed and hunger. As greed is a human trait that cannot be eliminated by edict, Lennon’s vision would require some sort of authority to prevent the “greedy” from reaping the benefits of their greed by owning “possessions.” (Yet another justification why “no country” should not be taken literally.) This sounds like a new Communist Manifesto. Lennon addressed that saying that Imagine was “virtually the Communist Manifesto, even though I am not particularly a communist and I do not belong to any movement.… But because it is sugar-coated, it is accepted.”
Also clustering around imagine is “all the people” which is so straightforward, it requires no deeper analysis, so let us complete our analysis of the lyric by looking at the chorus which consists of but four lines and twenty-three words:
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you will join me
And the world will live/be as one.

“All right,” the rhetor seems to be saying, “I admit that this may sound like a Utopian pipedream but others share my dream and if we can get everyone who listens to this message to join the ‘world can live as one,’ and then, (in the last chorus) ‘the world will be as one,’ and, although I am a dreamer, I am logical enough to know that the world is not ready for this now but could be someday if enough of us unite.” Again, this message carries an instruction that is so straightforward, it does not require metaphorical or cluster deconstruction. What the chorus obviously provide is ethos, “appeal to the rhetor’s character, “and logos, “logical argument.” (Foss 26)
The video of the song Imagine , a collaborative work of Lennon, Ono and others, was part of a larger work, a 70 minute film of the same name shot at the couple’s Tittenhurst Park home in Ascot, England. (Fricke) The Imagine video, which also is the first scene of the film, begins with John and Yoko walking on a tree-lined pathway through the fog to their mansion. The fog clears a bit as they approach the mansion, the song begins with four bar piano intro. As they walk into the clearing, Lennon begins singing---but as a voiceover not yet pictured at the piano-- and then as they stand at the door, a close up of the portal of the door reveals an inscription “This is not here.” The couple vanishes; the large salon appears with virtually no furnishings except a white grand piano on the far side of the room where John sits, playing and singing. Everything in the room is white, including Yoko Ono’s dress as she is shown opening the four pairs of white window panels one by one. The room now filled with light, a white globe hangs on the ceiling. A close up of John reveals that he is now wearing a blue shirt and a deep blue velvet jacket patterned with small star like symbols. After Yoko enlightens the salon, she walks to the piano and sits demurely and stoically as John sings the last verse and chorus. John glances over for approval but Yoko withholds it until the song ends. As John again looks to her for approval for what seems to be seconds but is actually only a brief moment, Ono permits herself a soft smile--a smile that seems to say “I am so proud of you, John”-- beams as John nods his head as if to say, “How about a kiss?” The two then kiss. Fade to white.
What are the metaphors and what do they mean? Some seem obvious to me, others, not so much. The fog represents the current state of the world. The world of war, greed and hunger. At the same time, the silence interrupted only by the sound of footsteps and birds chirping characterizes John and Yoko’s march toward peace. The fog lifting as the song begins embodies a new dawn. The couple is then shown standing at the door of the mansion, then the inscription “This is not here” appears above the door. The couple then disappears and viewers see the large expanse of the salon adorned in white with virtually no furniture. John and Yoko disappearing and the inscription is a metaphor for something but what? My interpretation is that viewers of the song are being told that the message of the song is “not here” in the mansion and that removing John and Lennon removes their lavish lifestyle from the message. Still, a conundrum exists between the “sharing the world/no possessions” philosophy and the video being filmed at this wealthy couple’s estate but I will leave others to explore that apparent contradiction; in the meantime, there a few more visual metaphors to explore.
The white globe on the ceiling may just happen to be a white globe that happens to be on the ceiling except, being aware of Yoko Ono’s artistry, the way it is framed exactly in the center suggests it means something. That “something,” is the purity of the world, awash in white, when the song’s vision becomes reality.
Yoko’s opening the window coverings one by one as the song progresses represents, again, the light of wisdom and peace enlightening the world as it absorbs the message of the song.
Yoko’s posture as she sits at the piano and her interaction with John also deserves comment. As John sings, Yoko sits upright, her demure expression revealing just a bit of sadness. Her slightly sad expression could be interpreted as a realization that this message is not ready to be accepted.
So what does this all tell us about the devices used to create this anthem that has become a worldwide anthem of peace? First of all, and I hesitate to even bring this up, but Lennon’s tragic death lends a poignancy to the message that would not exist if Lennon were alive today. This is, of course, a component completely out of the hands of a rhetor when creating a work. But one cannot help but think of how other pop stars’ tragic deaths—Billie Holiday, Hank Williams, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Elvis, Michael Jackson—added a coda to their body of work.
As I mentioned earlier, while Imagine has become a New Age anthem, another pop song, “God Bless America,” had already become a quasi-national anthem. The two works share a similarity in simplicity of lyric:
While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

God bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home
God bless America, My home sweet home.

The first stanza, the verse, is rarely sung and only the first two lines require explanation. The first line refers to the First World War breaking out in Europe and the second line refers to opposition at home to the United States becoming involved. The song was resurrected during the Second World War and a version by Kate Smith became particularly popular and it was her version that the professional hockey team, the Philadelphia Flyers adopted in the 1970s and, as previously noted, the chorus of the song has become a tradition at major league baseball games since 9/11. Berlin’s message is so simple and literal and contains but one metaphor: the light from above refers to God’s guidance. Therefore, the conclusion is to keep it simple which Lennon follows, although not nearly as simple as Berlin.
Secondly, an anthem’s call to action must not require a great deal of effort on the part of the audience. All that we citizens of the world are asked to do is “imagine” and, at some point in the future, join in. As the majority of people alive today have likely heard a version of this song, we can only guess how much it has influenced those who are now joining in on this worldwide movement that I spoke about earlier.
Next, for a song to become an anthem of new generations, the message should be revolutionary. Imagine, if it is anything, is revolutionary, Lennon himself calling it a “Communist Manifesto.”
Although I have purposely avoided discussing the melodic aspects of the song, before closing, it is necessary to point out that a pop song/anthem must have a compelling and lasting melody. Lennon’s haunting yet simple melody, as well as the rudimentary but catchy piano riff—one which allows anyone with basic piano skills to cover the song—will likely be one that remains in the public’s consciousness for a very long time.
The status of Imagine as a “New Age” anthem (Fricke) needs no further documentation. However, for those who have doubts, I suggest viewing the youtube.com video, ”Imagine John Lennon World Anthem” which depicts soccer players from around the world singing as well as reacting emotionally to the playing of this song at what appears to be a World Cup event.
Today, Yoko Ono asks, as she has continued to do, all the world’s 7 billion people to imagine peace. (imaginepeace.com)
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