Pete Seeger’s Where Have All The Flowers Gone is not your traditional anti-war song as the message is woven within a colorful, metaphorical tone. With the vast majority of protest songs illustrating unsightly anxieties, such as Slim Gaillard’s Atomic Cocktail (1945), Seeger’s song forces the audience to perceive acts of violence from a new position. The message revealed by lyrical analysis demonstrates the song as an urging plea for humanity to change their behavior.
While there is no one way to develop a song of protest, most depict destruction in an exceptionally clear form. Utilizing the previously mentioned song as an example, Atomic Cocktail, phrases such as “it feels like an earthquake,” and, “BOOM,” appear in it frequently. Instead of relying on literal descriptions of injury and devastation, Seeger takes a more gentle approach – using the metaphor of flowers being picked. Soldiers have simply “gone” to grave yards, there is no depiction of grieving loved ones or unrecognizable bodies. However, simple language still conjures a grim image in the listener, one of military recruitments funneling young soldiers head-on into burial plots and mausoleums.
Tender, indirect phrasing that relies mostly on describing a relatively peaceful scene of flower-picking intentionally diverts from the grotesque aspects of war most protest songs condemn. Political experts agree that war kills and destroys, and that the consequences of violence are not enough to end it. Soaring rockets and expanding clouds of gas cannot be blamed for the tragedies of war, the audience is forced to consider a new enemy: themselves.
The question that runs through Where Have All the Flowers Gone is answered by the implications in the lyrics. The song carries us through a journey, one free from blood and tears, but still bleeding with grief. The lyrics follow a pattern, with the third line of every stanza carrying the message further and further.
The first portion of the song describes the picking of the flowers. While not explicitly violent, the destruction of something as pure and fragile as a flower implies brutality. There’s no reason to feel upset with the girls; the crime of picking flowers is relatively impartial. Young girls, across media as a whole, are often associated with sweetness and purity. It is later demonstrated that the flowers are not picked as means of destruction, but rather a testament of their geniality. Boys, alternatively, are rambunctious and wild. The illustration of girls specifically being the ones to pick the flowers is notable, and an important portrayal of the division of sex humans continue to face today.
The young girls offered the flowers to the men, soon to be wed to them. Although the flowers were subject to destruction, they act as a catalyst for new love. Seeger’s inclusion of this detail is interesting; weddings are traditionally positive events, and the song expresses the negative aspects of war. The girls are picking flowers, getting married, and simply enjoying life. For our young men, the same cannot be said for them.
Similar to the picking of the flowers, the sending off of the young men is not inherently violent. No harm is illustrated, though the audience knows this development is not a positive one, as the absence of the flowers is salient enough to ask where they have gone. It is also notable that Seeger chose to use the word “girls” as well as the word “men.” Girls are young, female humans, less commonly portrayed in positions or environments that demonstrate violence; as that would distract from their implied amiability within society. Men are adult, male humans; often associated with power and strength, and in return, positions or environments that require a specific level of those attributes, such as serving in war.
The separation of subjects is interesting as it illustrates how the audience is expected to perceive them. The image of picking flowers is childish and innocent, while the image of soldiers leaving for war is responsible and dependable. The term “soldier” is one widely associated with courage and heroism, not the unjust killing of another human being. We attach the term, and other, similar ones such as “trooper,” with resilient individuals – oftentimes even children.
When a child faces an unpleasant situation with bravery and strength, an adult may affectionately call attention to their resilience by using the terms “soldier,” or “trooper,” – although holding grey connotations. Society’s utilization of the nicknames is very telling in terms of association; it could, in part, be related to why the draft age continues to drop lower and lower in the United States. By World War II, the conflict prior to the writing of Where Have All the Flowers Gone, the United States Selective Service mandatory registration age minimum had been lowered to 18. This decision fueled the “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” Movement, where Americans fought to elevate the voices of the teens eligible for the draft. Unfortunately for the young men, the next development in the song is their implied demise; never to return to their wives and their flowers.
It is stated that “every one” of the soldiers has gone to a graveyard, insinuating that none of the men survived the war. Much like the previous lines in the song, the lyrics do not portray the grotesque. The soldiers are never explicitly stated to be no longer living; the message is carried through the nonverbal implications. A graveyard is a physical location, a plot of land is denoted to it. The soldiers are nowhere to be seen, their presence is unspoken, yet the audience knows where they reside. Graveyards are not inherently sorrowful – they are physical realms for the living to remember loved ones.
The memory of a person lives on every second their soul is acknowledged. Prayers and visitations to burial sites initiate the positive association with graveyards. To enhance the environment surrounding them, lively vegetation and flowers are placed. The practice of placing flowers at a gravesite traces back to Ancient Greece; the belief being that if flowers take root on the grave of a buried body, the soul had successfully achieved peace. Although heavily associated with the dead, graveyards are far from unsightly. They are calming, and offer a space to celebrate lives that are no longer lived.
As the line concludes, the story has come around full circle. The flowers have gone to the girls, the girls have gone to the husbands, the husbands have gone to graveyards, the graveyards have gone to the flowers. The entire landscapes of the graveyards have been altered, no longer recognizable. For all the graveyards in the world to become usurped by flowers, humans would need to cease their impact on the planet. No foot steps to press the grass into the soil and create natural paths, no groundskeepers to control the wild shrubs and grass. This reality can only be assumed when and if humans no longer exist.
The song holds a message far beyond the idea that “war is bad”; our decisions as human beings are slowly killing us. Much like a funeral, the song is far from happy, yet is still comforting. The slow pace paired with the soft tone of voice creates a blanket over the grief, a lullaby to help the listener connect the subject. Throughout the lyrics of the song, the phrases “long time ago” and “long time passing” are used in alternating lines. The implication in this language is that the story is being told from the perspective of a future time, perhaps a foreseeable one. Although, the song is not explicitly placed in the past tense as the line, “When will they ever learn?” concludes every stanza.
The flowers are picked, the soldiers are dead— yet the narrator is still desperately pleading with humanity. The song’s answer to when humans will learn the consequences of their actions is never explicitly stated, but one knows in their soul that in the end: they will never learn. They will fight until there is nobody left to protect or destroy; leaving the world to flourish on its own, covering any sign of humanity’s destruction, sacrifice, and love.
