John Lennon Vietnam Essay

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I believe John Lennon clearly takes a stance against the Vietnam war, racism, sexism, and other general dividing issues of the late 60’s and early 70’s. First, it is necessary to analyze Lennon’s background. Although born into an Anglican household, he eventually would become critical of the religion and is highly considered to be an atheist, promoting unity towards everyone despite their religious views. This idea of religious freedom expressed in the song directly correlates the oppression of the Buddhist by Ngo Diem in Tibet, which led them to the destructive practice of self immolation. He produced the song one year after his trip to India, where he studied transcendentalism and meditation in a Northern Indian village. Indians, who are …show more content…
The song begins with “Everybody’s talking about Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism.” Bagism was a strategy created to satirize prejudice, referring to putting a bag over one's body so that no one could see race, gender, or religion. Thus, this can be directly linked to the civil rights and women's rights movements. Lennon the goes on to state conflicting ideologies which would then prove the difficulty to obtain the peace that he speaks of within the song. He mentions “ministers” which could be interpreted as an antiwar religious leader, or a political leader who supports the war. He also describes “sinisters” which is person of evil, probably responsible for the war and “canisters” which were weapons used to kill many people at once. The most specific lyrics related to the Vietnam War was when he says “Revolution.” Lennon is most likely referring to Vietnam's revolution against French colonial authority. Also, mentions of the “United Nations” are probably included to scold them for their bad job of keeping the peace within American
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