Music can open our eyes to a lot of what was happening in history. In the songs, "Turn Turn Turn" and "I Ain't Marching Anymore", the listener gets an inside look on how people in the 1960s were feeling about certain things happening at this time and their ideologies on these matters.  There were so many things happening at this time. The Vietnam War, Civil Rights protesting, the assassinations of U.S. President John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and the Cuban Missile Crisis were the crucial point of interests in the sixties. Toward the end of the sixties something some would say magical happened and the first man landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong, after the Apollo 11 spacecraft blasted its way into our atmosphere on July 16, 1969. This was a sigh of relief because of all the bad that happened in the sixties. These songs depict the Vietnam War and the want for peace during this time. 

To begin with, "Turn Turn Turn" is about how people in the sixties really wanted peace from the war. The lead singer, Peter Seeger, was a social activist and was active in the civil rights movement, labor movement, environmental movement, and anti-war movement. All of these movements were prevalent in the 1960s. He had the belief that music could bring people together to fight against what is not right and tried to rally them with his songs. Most of this song and the chorus come from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. This shows that they wanted the violence to stop and for the conflict to be resolved peacefully. In the song Seeger explains that there are bad times but we have to grow from them and try to fix whatever caused the problem. He wants people to know they can stand up for what they believe in and conquer it if they all stand together as a united front. This song is to reassure the listener that there is a time for the bad in life but the good is coming. "To everything ...  there is a season", this is restating the fact that Seeger believed that only good can come from the bad (The Byrds). His plea for peace is explained in the last line of the song, "A time for peace I swear it's not too late"(The Byrds). He wanted people of the time to stand against the war in Vietnam and hoped for peace through it all. 

"I Ain't Marching No Anymore" has the same idea of resistance of war as "Turn Turn Turn", but from a different perspective. This song is sang in the perspective of a solider that has fought in many wars throughout history. Phil Ouch, the singer of "I Ain't Marching Anymore", is an anti-war singer during the time when the Vietnam War was beginning to be a big deal in the 1960s. In the song he says "I heard many men lying, I saw many more dying", and after this line the line that is repeated throughout the song comes, "But I Ain't Marching Anymore" (Phil Ouch). This shows that the soldier in the song is beyond tired of seeing all of the casualties on the battlefield. In the song he speaks on the fact that most of the men fighting in these wars were young. That is not fair to him because it is the older men wanted the war but sending the young guys to go fight it. He explains this point in the lines, "It's always the old to lead us to the war, it's always the young to fall" (Phil Ouch). His use of repetition throughout the song of that one line shows how tired he is of marching through all these wars and he is finally quitting. The soldier in this song has been through every war since the early war of 1812. This would mean that he has fought everyone from the Indians to the Vietnamese. In the lines "Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun, Tell me is it worth it all", he is definitely trying to say that it is not worth it (Phil Ouch). All the young lives that were lost with the use of the gun and the cause being war. "Oh I must have killed a million men, And now they want me back again", this is him showing his downright disgust with the fact that he has killed so many men and they want him back to kill even more on the battlefield and he cannot fathom the thought of doing so (Phil Ouch). There is lines in the song that also show his disgust with war, "When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning, That I ain't marchin' anymore" (Phil Ouch). These lines are about the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan for their attack on Pearl Harbor on August 7, 1941. His attitude toward this was negative because of how many civilians that they killed on that day. He knew that war was a never ending action because one side will do something to the other and that side will get mad and try to make them pay for what they did. The lines,"Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason" and "Call it "Love" or call it "Reason", show that the soldier in the song does not care what the war supporter want to say or what reason they want to give his action to not march anymore is not changing (Phil Ouch). This song was get more people to be against the war just like he is. 

Amongst all the differences in the songs, they are alike in many ways to show how people in America in the 1960s and 1970s are so focused on the war. They are both against the war on Vietnam. Both artists are trying to get the listeners to open their eyes and protest against the war. They both use repetition to show how they are feeling toward the war. "Turn Turn Turn" is repeated and the singer is trying to say that there is a time for war but that is definitely over and "I Ain't Marching Anymore" is a soldier's cry for the fighting to stop because of how horrible it really is in his eyes. Both of these songs would be rallying songs of the decade that is the Vietnam War. They show that this was a huge conflict in this time period and something that the people put a lot of thought into. 

All in all, these two pieces are basically telling the listener the same things. They use repetition to show their ideas and stress them to the listener. These songs, "Turn Turn Turn" and "I Ain't Marching Anymore", are showing the ideologies and values that the artists think are a big deal in this time period. They are both anti-war anthems of the mid-1900s. 

