Work that I am proud of

This is the work I am proud of, it is our writing task for week 10. We had to write an essay on a song called 'I will not let you down', type it up onto the computer in a size 12 font (which is quite small) and it had to be more than a page. Mine was about one page and a bit less than a half, but it may not look like it on this post. Enjoy.

I will not let you down

By Sean Donnelly/Don McGlashan

‘I will not let you down’  was written by Sean Donnelly and sung by Don McGlashan. It contains many different ideas and images that could be interpreted in different ways, I will discuss both the meaning and the language features.

The main idea of the song is that someone is trying to get back to their girlfriend. He wants her to know that he regrets the mistakes that he made in their relationship and he wants her to believe it won’t happen again this can be seen when the song says ‘So I row to your isle all that distance reconciled should my arms and shoulders fail put my trust in wind and sail’ this also shows that he will do everything he can to try to get to her even if it drains the energy out of him.

The song has lots of religious imagery, for example ‘carried my cross’, ‘temple’, ‘altar’. 

The songwriter may have been trying to convey the idea that the singer of the song wants to be back with who he is trying to get to so badly that he asks God to help him achieve what he is trying to do.

There are many language features in this song like rhyme, for example ‘fail’, ‘sail’, ‘bind’, ‘mind’, ‘you’ and ‘true’. For the chorus the main line is ‘I will not let you down’ the songwriter was using repetition to emphasize the point that he wouldn’t let her down. Similes were also used in the song like ‘There’s a heart here that beats like a drum’ this gives us the idea that he was nervous that he wouldn’t get to his destination or that he was nervous about getting there and seeing her again. This song also contains metaphors for example ‘an ocean of swallowed pride’ which conveys the idea of that the singer of the song  is swallowing his pride and asking the person he is singing to for forgiveness.

‘I will not let you down’ is a powerful song written by Sean Donnelly that can touch your heart with many possible and deep meanings. The many language features in the song all mean something important and gives the song lots of clues to what the singer is thinking. It contains and gives you a feeling of sadness and regret throughout the song, but it also has a message of love, hope and belief.

By Christine Chow