In the early stages of Bob Dylan’s career, his music reflected the concerns of the typical anti-war, white, New York- living working man in the early 1960’s. His first album of original works was released in the year 1963, when the Vietnam war was in full swing and much of America was torn between the impossible decision of whether to fight for their country or to fight for peace. At this time, Dylan had just began his musical career. He released his first studio album with Columbia Records in 1962, a work which consisted of almost all covers of folk, blues, and gospel songs. Dylan lived in New York at the time, spending time with his idol, Woody Guthrie, while also constantly writing music and performing. Because The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan included so many anti-war songs, many of his works were referred to as “protest songs.” But, that was not his goal. In an interview, Dylan said of his intentions when creating music, "All right, now, look. It's not all that deep. It's not a complicated thing. My motives, or whatever they are, were never commercial in the money sense of the word…The songs used to be about what I felt and saw"(Gilliland). This is part of what makes Dylan so emblematic of his times. Like he said, he simply wrote about his experiences and feelings at the time, instead of parroting what people wanted to hear. By embodying just a normal New Yorker, his music was able to portray the feelings of the average working, white American who earnestly believed that the war needed to end. “All I can do is be me" he said in an interview with The Los Angeles Free Press; " -- whoever that is -- for those people that I do play to, and not come on with them, tell them I'm something I'm not"(Paul J. Robbins Interview). Dylan also was not singing to convince pro-war men of his opinion; nor did he expect them to agree with him, “My songs say things. I sing them for people who know what I'm saying" (Paul J. Robbins Interview).
Dylan’s song, “Blowin’ in the Wind” is one of his most famous songs and for good reason. The song consists of line after line of rhetorical questions, including the topics of war and freedom. “How many times must the cannon balls fly/ before they’re forever banned?” and “how many deaths will it take till he knows/ that too many people have died?”(Naucruz). These lines show Dylan’s strong anti-war sentiments, as he asks about why people must continue to lose their lives when we could put an end to all of the deaths. Additionally, the song is set to the tune of an old African-American spiritual called “No More Auction Block,” alluding to broader themes of peace and justice, when Dylan sings, “How many years can some people exist/Before they're allowed to be free?”(Naucruz) . Dylan also mentions a problem that he believes to be one of the biggest at the time: inaction. In the song, he asks “How many times can a man turn his head/ And pretend that he just doesn't see?" (Naucruz). Dylan sees the people of his generation witnessing injustice, related to the Vietnam war and beyond, and he claims in an interview that "Some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong,"("500 Greatest Songs'"). Rather than succumbing to the indifference, Dylan puts what he sees into his music for everyone to hear and relate to. In this track, he is able to demonstrate the frustrated feeling of the men he represents.
Another song on the album, “Masters of War” contains more aggressive, accusing lyrics aimed toward the American war leaders and officials. This song seems to contain all of Dylan’s built up anger about the war compressed into one song, as he goes so far as to wish death upon the war leaders. In this song, Dylan appears to be saying many of the things that young men at this time wished they could say at the people in positions of authority, particularly regarding the draft. Dylan sang:
you play with my world
like it’s your little toy
and put a gun in my hand
and hide from my eyes
and you turn and run farther
when the fast bullet flies (Sherwin).Dylan, as well as many other men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six, felt this same anger and resentment towards the people responsible for sending them into war. This anger was not something unique to Dylan and his peers. Many anti-war protests were held by peace activists and on college campuses across the country. These events were often run by an organization called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that began as a civil rights movement, but moved into protesting the war in the mid sixties. ("Vietnam War Protests") After many accusatory lines regarding the rising death count and the cowardly, lying people of power, Dylan addresses his own situation. He says, “you might say that I’m young/ you might say I’m unlearned,” to show that he acknowledges his low standing in society. But, he then says, “but there’s one thing I know/ though I’m younger than you/ that even Jesus would never/ forgive what you do” (Sherwin). This message drives home his contention that even young, uneducated men such as himself can grasp that throwing men into war against their will is unforgivable and immoral.
“Talkin’ World War III Blues” demonstrates how Dylan was aware of how many men in his generation shared the same fears regarding the war. In the song, Dylan describes to a therapist a dream that he had about a desolate post-war town, “Well, I got up and walked around/ and up and down the lonesome town/ I stood a-wondering which way to go” (Hostetler). In the dream, Dylan portrays a few encounters he has in this town with exceedingly paranoid, unfriendly people. First, he is shot at when attempting to receive food at a shelter. Next, the hot dog vender runs away from him because he believes he is a communist for saying “howdy friend” (Hostetler). He then complains of feeing sad and lonely, so he calls an operator and listens to a voice tell the time for over an hour. Dylan includes these dismal events to display his fear of a world ruined by war, a world full of paranoia and loneliness. In the end of the song, Dylan depicts the therapist admitting to having the same dream. He says, "Hey I've been havin' the same old dreams/ But mine was a little different you see/ I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me/ I didn't see you around"(Hostetler). Dylan does this to demonstrate the universality of his fear; that everyone is subconsciously afraid that if war comes to the point where nuclear weapons are used, than that will be the end of the world. The fact that Dylan includes this end ing to the song shows that he knows the people listening to his song will have the same worry. The same applies to “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” a song about the horrors of war and the looming threat of nuclear warfare. Each stanza begins with two questions for his “darling young one” (Bluejay MusicChannel) about what he has experienced. Each stanza ends with the warning, “a hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” meaning that something big and bad is looming. Dylan sings, “I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it” (Bluejay MusicChannel) to illustrate that from the day you are born, you are put in danger by the war. He says, “I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children” (Bluejay MusicChannel) to indicate that heavy violence is present everywhere, even with kids. Dylan also said in an interview that the line “Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters” means “all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers” (Attwood). Each of these lines depicts Dylan’s use of morbid poetry to show the horrors of war.
In this album, Bob Dylan uses his own experiences and feelings to inspire morbid poetry that perfectly reflects the feelings of peers at that time. His refusal to label his music as "protest music" shows that he was not singing about the war to win others to his side, but because these issues weighed heavily on his mind, just like so many other young Americans at this time. As Peter Wood states in his article "Eternal Protest: Bob Dylan’s Lasting Rage," "Dylan himself never embraced the view that he was 'the authentic expression of the disturbed and concerned conscience of Young America'”(Wood). Dylan didn't think of himself as a voice of his generation; but, just by taking his experiences and putting them into poetry for the world could hear, his compelling voice became a strong force for change.
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