I Didn't Promis You a Rose Garden

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Professor -----

Writing 150 - Section ---

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"I Didn't Promise You a Rose Garden" - Shad

"When Abraham went to slash Isaac, in a sense he baptized him". What could this mean possibly mean? How could the prophet obeying the Lord be related to a baptism for Abraham? Shad throws the listeners of his song Rose Garden straight into his perspective of the world. Dealing with problems can be hard, and that difficulty will increase if you have don't have a wide view of what is happening around you. Rose Garden shows the importance of standing with the correct viewpoint in your life with constant symbolism, analogies, repetition and logos.

In the song Rose Garden, symbolism and repetition go hand-in-hand, this is because of the repeated chorus: "I didn't promise you a rose garden, along with the sunshine, there's gotta be some rain sometimes." Shad presents many situations along with answers to his readers. And at the end of each thought, the chorus is sung, but with a different meaning each time. The first subject brought up pertains to the world that we life in. One of the first lines in the song is "the same things that float your boat can capsize it," and that leads to the thought of the most common "boat floater" in society, material objects. People think that all of their cars, real estate and jewelry is what really makes them happy. But when those things lead to debt and delusional spending, it leads them in a downward spiral that is very hard, and sometimes impossible, to escape. "Those who have eyes should act like it" is a great line from Rose Garden that asks everyone to look around and realize that this is a reality in our world and not to make the same foolish decisions. In this situation, the word "sunshine" could equate to living a material life, while the "rain" is the hardships that it usually guides towards.

That leads into the next thought of the actions that should accompany the knowledge of what is happening in our world today. "To help the sightless, seeking the light switch, to see in the night with, we leadin the lifeless" shows that we need to help people that are either stuck in this problem or are going to have a future that will very much go down that path. Shad quotes another artist (Cee-Lo) and says "I know too much and I owe too much to let it rest". When a great knowledge is placed upon us, we have a responsibility to use it correctly. This includes fulfilling it ourselves but also teaching others. You cannot let your knowledge "rest" as Cee-Lo says and Shad also addresses this: he talks about laying in bed at home, "making some dough" and "staying in [his] safety zone", which are all fairly unproductive in-terms of spreading his knowledge. Human nature doesn't want to leave a "safety zone" to help others, it wants to be self-indulgent and not worry about anything else. For this instance, "sunshine" is equivalent