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Benjamin Nalley

Professor Leonard

ENG.1201

2/18/2022

Imagine

“Imagine all the people livin’ life in peace”. This quote from John Lennon’s “Imagine”

is essentially the crux of the 1971 song. He offers some suggestions in order to simplify the

world which he believes will bring peace. Gal Gadot recently made a cover of the song back

in 2020 alongside some other notable figures such as late-night talk show host Jimmy Fallon

and actor Will Ferrel. Both renditions of the song have very similar audiences being as many

people as the song can reach, with Lennon’s being more timeless and Gadot’s being more

relevant for the Covid-19 Pandemic, similar claims for equality, with Lennon’s focus on

equality through simplicity and Gadot’s focus on equality through a shared experience, and

using pathos, or emotions, to appeal to their audience.

John Lennon lived an incredible life. He is most well known for being the founder,

singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the band known as the Beatles. He wrote and performed

the song “Imagine” along with an album by the same name a year after his band broke up.

Lennon had a history of being peace activist, right up until he was fatally shot in the year

1980. Gal Gadot, the cover artist, is an actress and a model who is most well known for

playing the character “Wonder Woman” in recent movies.

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            John Lennon’s original song calls for peace in the world. He does this by trying to

make things simpler by asking hypotheticals about things that complicate and add violence to

the world such as “Imagine there is no Heaven” and “Imagine no possessions”, speaking of

religion and wealth respectively. This imagining of an absence of these peace preventing

concepts is a way to suggest to the audience that the world could be better without them as

there would be more peace. Gal Gadot’s cover of the song uses the same exact lyrics, so it is

possible to draw the same conclusion for a claim as the original. However, to look at the

reason to why Mrs. Gadot wrote her cover would lead to a different conclusion. She made the

cover at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March of 2020 as a way to cope

through the cabin fever and to possibly raise the spirits of those who listen to it.

            In Mr. Lennon’s original song, he made it very clear that his audience was the entire

world. This is evident in the last line of the song, “I hope someday you’ll join us, and the

world will live as one.” This shows that his song was for as many people as possible as he

wanted the whole world to hear the song and come together. As mentioned before, Gadot’s

cover of the song was meant for those who were dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, which

at the time was fairly close to everybody, all across the world. Lennon’s is timeless as it

makes no reference to any contemporary issue at the time and its core beliefs will most likely

forever remain to be relevant as things like religion and wealth have been constant for a long

time, while Gadot’s is more temporary as it was only meant for the time during the pandemic.

            Since the core of the song is the same in both renditions and they both make a similar

claim, the rhetorical appeal to their audience is also the same in that they use pathos, or

emotional appeal. The lyrics “Nothing to kill or die for” and “No need for greed or hunger”

both suggest that their vision of the world would be better and more perfect. They come to
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this conclusion by using the emotional appeal of safety and satisfaction, two emotions that are

fairly sought out after in the world.

            In conclusion, Gal Gadot’s cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” hits many of the same

original points, but she uses the song for the immediate situation at the time rather than for its

timeless nature. She also ignores the calls for simplicity and instead goes for a call of unity

under the idea of a shared experience. The one thing that she completely shares with Lennon

is the rhetorical appeal of using pathos as she didn’t alter any of the words or try a massively

different interpretation. Gadot’s creation may have taken the same words from John Lennon’s

“Imagine”, but she managed to accomplish a slightly different goal by using the context of the

world around her.

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Works Cited

“John Lennon-Imagine.” YouTube, uploaded by siom4 4 Dec.

2010,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v27CEFE02Hs

“Gal Gadot singing Imagine with other stars.” YouTube, uploaded by bgcyclops 19 Mar.

2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQK32bwvRuI