Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song “Have You Ever Seen The Rain,” many people take it as a song about a bad time or situation coming and the way it feels to struggle through it. However, it questions these people asking if they have ever had to deal with these situations. It also delves into the feeling of these hard times and uses many different literary elements to express the difficulty of facing them and describe how they make him feel. John Fogerty, the lead guitarist for CCR, wrote this song and used many different things while writing it to convey all of these thoughts. One of the most common literary devices used in songs is repetition. In this song, …show more content…
He says “I want to know, have you ever seen the rain,” (l. 7) which is asking if they have ever went through anything as awful as what he is referring to. This line is repeated throughout the song many times, emphasizing that he is very bothered by the fact that people are saying things will be okay because it is hard to realize this when going through a difficult time. John believes that they would not being saying these things if they had experienced the sadness that he was suffering from because things did not seem like they would get better for him.
Another device used in this song is imagery. He paints such a vivid picture of the rain, storms, and weather going on all around him. The first thing he describes is people’s opinions of
Cook 2 how it will feel when the rain ends. In lines four through six, the song says “When it's over, so they say it’ll rain a sunny day, I know, shining down like water.” This means that when the rain, or bad times, end, the sun will come out and things will get better. Another example is in lines ten and eleven where it says, “ Yesterday and days before, Sun is cold and rain is hard.” These lines are showing his struggles; it implies that they have been going on for a long time. Even …show more content…
The device used most in this song is symbolism. It is exercised throughout “Have You
Ever Seen The Rain” many times. One example is “There’s a calm before the storm” (l. 2) which is referring to the short period of time before a storm when there is a quiet space in which there is a foreboding feeling the air that one is coming. Another portion of the song says, “Sun is cold and rain is hard, I know, been that way for all my life” (ll. 11, 12) and this is symbolic of a few different things. The sun being cold could stand for the cold feeling Fogerty was suffering through during this time. Also, the rain being hard is about the struggle of dealing with the everyday sadness that he was suffering from during this time. Apparently, he has been suffering from these emotions all of his life, which is reflected by the theme of this song. In lines seventeen and eighteen, CCR says once again “I want to know, have you ever seen the rain,
Coming down on a sunny day.” In this portion of the song, this may represent how Fogerty feels like life is going on all around him like it is normal, but it still seems like a rainy day to him.