19 pages • 38 minutes read
Bob DylanBlowin' in the Wind
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1962A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Endless Injustices and Brutalities of Human Society
The poem’s main theme centers on injustice and inhumanity. While the historical context situates the poem at a time of state-sanctioned racism in the United States and the succession of deadly wars in the 20th century, the figurative language shows how, throughout time, injustice and brutality pervade human society. It is as if cruelty and oppression are ever-present or endless. Each question could point to an injustice Dylan witnessed in the early 1960s, or to grave wrongs that existed before the poem and continue in contemporary times. The durable symbolism gives the poem a persistent relevance. Regardless of where or when the reader engages with the poem, the lack of specifics allows them to connect the theme to their current situation.
One of the key injustices is inequality. People do not treat other people as equals. People create labels and categories that dehumanize people and cast them as expendable and liable to violence or death. The speaker takes on this inequality when they ask, “How many roads must a man walk down / Before you call him a man?” (Lines 1-2). Some people get to be human; others do not. The focus on inequality resumes when the speaker asks, “[H]ow many years can some people exist / Before they’re allowed to be free?” (Lines 11-12). Some people live a life of liberty, while others face oppression and debilitating restrictions. Inequality also relates to attention. The speaker asks, “[H]ow many ears must one man have / Before he can hear people cry?” (Lines 19-20). Society tends to heed some people’s suffering but ignore the distress of others.
The world is quite brutal, and war has been a part of it for a long time. The speaker wonders when the white dove can sleep, in other words, when peace will dominate the earth. The mention of cannonballs and innumerable dead bodies further the theme of brutality. Wars throughout human history have killed countless individuals. In the poem, the world is neither peaceful nor equal. It is unjust and brutal—death, dehumanization, obstruction, and apathy reign.
The Need to Change the World
Despite the theme of injustice and brutality, the poem is not hopeless. The speaker brings up the world’s seemingly endless cruelties because they want to do something about them. Change is another key theme in the poem. The speaker does not want the violence and hate to continue. They think people should act. The speaker has a solution: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind / The answer is blowin’ in the wind” (Lines 7-8, 15-16, 23-24). The wind symbolizes the urgent need for change. If people embraced the current moment—that is, what is happening in society, what is blowing in the wind—they might realize that they do not have to perpetuate wars and dehumanization. They can, like the wind, blow the barbaric norms away.
In Dylan’s time, people mobilized against racism. People in the civil rights movement sacrificed their welfare and lives to draw attention to the lethal inequality between Black people and white people. The activists demonstrate that people can change society and make it less unequal and iniquitous. The forceful activism links to the wind. The activists represent the current cultural moment. They compelled people to turn their heads and hear people cry. They wanted to wash the mountain into the sea and destroy the racism that blocked their freedom and denied their humanity. Two years after the song, activists literally marched down a road to claim their humanity. In 1965, they marched along the highway from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, the state capital, to protest voting laws that disenfranchised Black people.
The wind is mobile, and the figurative language makes the poem adaptable. The wind can represent diverse forms of activism. The speaker suggests that oppression does not stand alone: Where there is injustice, resistance—the wind exists as well, trying to blow the wrongs away. The world suffers from many ills—racism, war, sexism—and the wind, hypothetically, can provide relief from these problems. If more people would work with the wind, perhaps there would be change. As the speaker ends each stanza with the wind, the speaker stresses the dire need for change.
Bearing Witness Versus Action
In the poem, the speaker witnesses the many wrongs that haunt society. They do not turn their head, and they hear people cry. The theme of seeing is pivotal to the poem. For the speaker to ask their questions, they must look at the world and inventory its numerous problems. People cannot change anything if they cannot discern the destruction and dehumanization. Through the questions, the speaker helps the reader see the horrors in the world. The reader can watch “the cannonballs fly” (Line 5) and “hear people cry” (Line 20). By reading the poem, the reader arguably becomes conscious, as well. The reader “just doesn’t see” (Line 14): they saw—the speaker showed them.
As the speaker identifies the troubles, they also suggest a solution: the wind. It is not enough to be aware of injustice and brutality: people must take action against them as well. The next step is the wind of action—it moves. People, too, have to get up and do something. They should embrace the spirit of their time and combat the pernicious norms. Changing the world is not easy. The abstract wind indicates that there are multiple ways to demolish the wrongs. The speaker is not dogmatic. They do not clearly outline a specific strategy, but they provide a general answer: they encourage action. The reader must figure out the most effective action for themselves to take.
The speaker pressures the reader to answer their call and embrace their adaptable solution, so the reader might wonder what the speaker is doing to change the world. Is the speaker taking action? Does their poem count as a form of activism? The speaker's passive approach—they ask questions, they put the burden on the wind—leads to the interpretation that they're more comfortable as a witness than as an active participant in any movement for change. Dylan’s biography indicates that he didn’t want to link himself to activist movements or protest music. He claims “Blowin’ in the Wind” isn’t “a protest song or anything like that, ’cause I don’t write protest songs.” He adds, “I’m just writing it as something to be said, for somebody, by somebody” (Thomas, Richard F. Why Bob Dylan Matters. HarperCollins Publishers, 2017). Dylan’s subversive interpretation distances him from the speaker and suggests the reader must follow the wind and create change. The speaker is not rallying social justice warriors, necessarily, but urging the listener to open their hearts and minds to the truth and find new answers to old problems in the winds of change.
