19 pages • 38 minutes read
Bob DylanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
As the lyrics appear on Bob Dylan’s official website, the song, as a poem, has a tidy and organized look or form. The poem has three stanzas, and each stanza contains eight lines. In other words, all the stanzas are octaves. Other versions of the songs can separate the final two lines of each stanza. Either way, these lines qualify as the chorus, or, to use a poetry term, the refrain. The repetition of the phrase, “[t]he answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind / The answer is blowin’ in the wind” (Lines 7-8, 15-16, 23-24), adds to the form of the poem. It gives the final two lines in each stanza an identical look.
As for the meter, the poem is in free verse. Dylan is free to use as many sets of unstressed, stressed syllables (feet) as he wants, and the lines vary throughout. Yet Dylan maintains a noticeable balance. Each question takes up two lines, with the first line slightly longer (more syllables) than the second line. While free verse often signals that the poem is free from rhyme, Dylan’s poem contains a set rhyme scheme. Starting with the second line in each stanza, every other line rhymes. The rhymes produce a melody. They inject the lyrics with a lilt separate from the guitar and the harmonica featured in the song.
The poem is full of figurative language, and this literary device leads to another: symbolism. As the language is often figurative, it represents something else—it symbolizes a complex or sweeping idea, concept, or thing. In the poem, the figurative language symbolizes the myriad injustices that haunt the world, from dehumanization to inequality to brutal wars. Dylan could mention specific injustices and wars—the Cold War with the Soviet Union or the oppression of Black people in the United States—but his speaker makes the grave wrongs relatively abstract, and the figurative language keeps the poem fluid and mobile. By staying away from specifics and relying on symbols, the poem does not appear out of date: war, inequality, and brutality continue to ravage the world, and the figurative language allows the reader to connect the poem to a contemporary conflict that is most relevant to them.
Conversely, the ongoing relevance of the poem suggests a failure. People are disconnected, and they are not listening to the wind, so they are not making substantial changes. The world remains a deeply precarious place for countless people. The number of ails assaulting humanity at any given time might be another reason Dylan chose to remain vague. He does not want to leave any trauma out or let any injustice off the hook.
Repetition adds to the simple, straightforward tone of the poem. The speaker wants to know why so many wrongs exist in the world, and they use repetition to structure their questions. The first five lines in each stanza start with the same words. Lines 1, 9, and 17 begin with, “How many”; Lines 2, 10, and 18 start with the word, “Before”; Lines 3, 11, and 19 with “Yes, ‘n’”; Lines 4, 12, and 20 start with “Before”; and lines 5, 13, and 21 also begin with “Yes ‘n.’” In the tradition of folk music, the frequent appearance of the same words keeps the diction limited and unadorned. The speaker does not have time for fancy words or a diverse vocabulary, which might alienate the audience. Their focus is on the general woes of the world, and the situation of the common man and woman. They want to illustrate injustice and brutality for everyone, regardless of their vocabulary. To make things easier, the speaker relies on repetition, creating a pattern the reader can follow.
Each stanza ends with repetition. There are three questions per stanza, and all three questions have the same solution: the wind. The repetition of the wind allows the speaker to highlight, on three separate occasions, what people need to do: follow the wind.