Everything is a Text

Julia Burchfield
Adam Weinstein
EN 101
November 1, 2006
Everything is Text
In Toby Keith’s song Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue he creates a persona who is responding to the events of September 11th. The persona in the song is a southern man; which is obvious from certain southern diction in his song like: “‘cause, flyin’, shakin’, and ringin’”; and some lyrics in the song are not phrases that a lady would say; for example: “Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass”. The persona in this song is also familiar with war and its outcomes. One can see this through his lyrics: “My daddy served in the army where he lost his right eye”. All of these qualities about the persona affect the message, audience, goals, and effectiveness of the song.
The song Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue is a song responding to the events of 9/11. The persona tells us this in the song when he states: “Now this nation that I love has fallen under attack, a mighty sucker punch came flyin in from somewhere in the back”. In these lines he is referring to when the planes “flew” into the World Trade Center. The persona’s response to this event is that he is angry and wants people to take action, as one can see in the following lines: “Justice will be served and the battle will rage, this big dog will fight when you rattle his cage”. This is also the song’s message; that the persona is furious that the events of 9/11 occurred, and he thinks that Americans should go and fight. His message is constructed in a way that it gets the audience riled up.
He begins his song talking about soldiers and the fact they are fighting to keep us safe (“American girls and American guys will always stand up and salute, we’ll always recognize when we see old glory flying there’s a lot of men dead, so we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our head”). The persona then goes into telling the audience about his personal life. The second stanza uses both pathos and ethos to accomplish its goal. He talks about his father going to fight in the army and losing his right eye, which is the element of ethos. He does this to make his audience feel a personal connection to the persona. He then continues to say that even though his father lost his eye, he still flew a flag in the yard and wanted his family to live in a free nation. This part of the stanza leans more towards pathos; because the audience also feels proud live under a free nation. The rest of the stanza also leans more towards pathos. The persona states that “Now this nation that I love has fallen under attack, a mighty sucker punch came flyin in from somewhere in the back”. This part of the song is when the audience begins to get riled up. They, like the persona, get furious that someone would attack this nation for no reason and without warning. It is during the chorus of the song that he states a part of his message: “Hey Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list”. Here he is stating that your name is at the top of the drafting list and that you should go and fight. The rest of chorus plays on the element of pathos, by continuing to make the audience feel pumped up by stating that “And the statue of liberty started shakin her fist and the eagle will fly, man, it’s gonna be hell when you hear mother freedom start ringin her bell, and it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you, brought to you courtesy of the red white and blue.” The reason the chorus gets the audience so pumped up is because he uses American symbols to play on the audience’s emotions. The eagle, Statue of Liberty, and the Liberty Bell are all things that make Americans proud to be a part of this country; they give Americans a sense of patriotism. When Toby Keith puts these symbols in the song, it makes the audience feel patriotic and angry that anyone would try and take that away from them. Thus, the chorus accomplishes one of Toby Keith’s goals in getting the audience riled up.
There are both positive and negative qualities about this song. The positive aspect of the song is that the persona makes the audience feel connected to him, and he controls their emotions by getting the audience to agree with his point of view and getting them pumped up. However, the negative aspect of the song is that we know that Toby Keith is not living out his own message. He is telling his audience that they should go fight, and he is not doing that. Instead he is making money off people listening and getting pumped up from his music. I think that the people who do not like Toby Keith look at this negative aspect and feel as if Toby Keith is lying to them.
Even though there is that negative aspect of the song, Toby Keith’s goal for the song was met. He wanted people to listen to this song and feel proud to be an American. It was very effective in making his audience feel patriotic. The chorus is a very important part of the song because that is the peak of the song and it is where the audience feels most riled up. Therefore, Toby Keith was successful in writing this song because he got his message across to his audience and he also let the world know where he stood when it came to the war.