"Like A Rolling Stone", analysis of Bob Dylan's song.

Twenty-two year old singer/songwriter Dodie Clark has become internet-famous with her cheerful jingles and poetic introspection. With over a million subscribers, her youtube channel- affectionately named “doddleoddle”- draws in countless individuals to bear witness to her hours of musical content. Dodie is known, in fact, for her ability to write lyrics which are poetry first and music second. Clark, in her 2016 song “When,” employs metaphor to invoke imagery, euphemism, and indirect self-addressment in an effort to articulate her plea that she finally begin to take initiative and live her life

1. “Like a Rock” by Bob Seger, which is an inspirational song that talks about a middle-aged man who encounters frustration in his aging problem. Also, he reminded back to his youth life to reflect memories and compare with now differences. There a lot of shots to focus on the men’s emotion and react; for example, he is smoking and playing the guitar. Around twenty years later, he has got a lot of things, but he still cannot find his own feeling when he was young, such as passion in playing music, rock. Finally, he knows that it cannot change anything and it should have a position to face challenges in his beginning life. In this song recommend many times “like a rock” that means no matter now who you are, people have their own opportunities

The 1960’s was an era of revolution and social change in the United States. Painters, dancers, actors, musicians and many more artists all wanted to portray societies immoral issues through their art. Musicians played a very prominent role in providing society with an outlet on the importance of this change. Within these musicians was a folk rock singer and songwriter by the name of Robert Allen Zimmerman, or as America knows him, Bob Dylan. He is known and honored around the world for his influence on popular music and culture, however, he is much more than that (Wood 313). The beginning of Bob Dylan’s career as a singer and songwriter was marked by his repetitive emphasis on social change throughout his protest songs which include “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Masters of War,” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’”; with each song, Dylan exposes many issues that affected, not one, but many lives as he aimed to spread social and political consciousness to society.

Not only is music a great form of entertainment, but it also can portray a meaningful message. In the song, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, the artist Buffy-Sainte Marie does just that. After further analysis, one can understand what the song is about and its significance. This, among with many other aspects of the song, can help one truly comprehend what she is attempting to get across to the audience.

At only 22, he was crowned the voice of a generation. His audiences became mesmerized with his expressive lyrics and soulful harmonica. He changed the way the world looks at songwriting and protest, and inspired countless future musicians from the moment he stepped up on the stage in his railroad hat, denim jacket, and harmonica brace. However, it is clear that there is so much more behind Bob Dylan than just a rough voice and a collection of poetic songs. As one man said about Dylan’s early days in Greenwich Village, “There’s a quality of determination and of will that some people have that when they’re doing something, they’re really doing it and you

This theme is brought through the song by showing multiple literary devices. Such as “I'm the one at sail, I’m the master of my sea”. This metaphor shows the realization and empowerment that oneself can give in a depressing situation. This simile “Falling like ashes to the ground, Hoping my feelings they would drown” compares his feeling of sadness and depression to ashes, and wanting them to drown and vanish, from his life. This line, “All the hate that you’ve heard has turned your spirit to a dove” explains how all of the hate that he has experienced and gone through has turned his feelings around, and decided to look on the bright side of things. Personally I think this is a great

The refrain goes like this, “When I look into your eyes / There’s just devils and dust”. Eyes are often used in poetry and in popular culture as a path to see what somebody really feels and how that person is really like in the inside. If in a person’s eyes “there’s just devils and dust” it shows that that person is troubled, haunted, and desolated. The visual image of “devils and dust” illustrates a godforsaken place, which is what that person’s soul has become. Following that the speaker tells his friend, Bobby, how they are a “long, long way from home”. These verses can have two meanings: they can refer to a soldier in a war (thus the relation with the Iraq War) or they could mean that we have strayed so far away from our values, from what we were founded upon, that this is no longer home, it is now a strange place. Many people argue, and with some justification, that the United States in the past years is becoming less and less like the country it was founded to be. The verse, “I feel a dirty wind blowing” once more takes us to the Iraq War since it evokes the image of a desert. It also relates, together with the “finger on the trigger”, to the Wild West, which seems to be where Springsteen has gotten most of the imagery for his CD (as it can be seen in songs with titles such as “Black Cowboys” and “The Hitter”). The Wild West used to be a treacherous place, which relates with the

The early 1960s was a time of extreme social issues such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement; everyone was looking for their own voice in this time of adversity. A young Bob Dylan arises to the spotlight and sings songs speaking of protest and originality, expressing societal dissatisfaction felt by not only himself but by his entire generation. In the 1960s Dylan wrote many protest songs that people of his generation found themselves connecting to, leading way to a counterculture aside from popular music which also paved a way for introspective song writing.

     Bob Dylan’s song, The Hurricane, brings to surface several of the themes covered in class this semester. The song explores general themes like community and responsibility, while also focusing on many of the sub-themes, such as justice and injustice, appearance and reality, and loyalty and abandonment. Throughout the song, the main characters constantly battle with the above themes in attempt to frame an innocent man. While the song brings up many of these themes, Dylan’s characters show little consistency with the texts covered, as the texts tend to try to find reconciliation in the characters, while Dylan’s characters feel no remorse in their actions.

The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums. To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum and to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger. No one doubted that he pulled the trigger. And though they could not produce the gun, the D.A. said he was the one who did the deed and the all-white jury agreed.” In this verse Dylan is making a point that not only were the Patterson police trying to make an example out of Hurricane but also the D.A. and the overseeing judge.

The next verse in the song addresses privileged class in American culture, the wealthiest of Americans. The song states that, “Some folks are born silver spoon in hand, Lord, don’t they help themselves, oh” criticising the rich who live easier life where things are often given to them and the song also calls them greedy by saying that “they help themselves”. Fogerty further criticizes the rich by saying how they do not help the poorer citizens with the lyrics, “But when the tax men come to the door, Lord, the house look a like a rummage sale, yes” showing how the high class “tax men” are coming to take away the belongings and the livelihoods of the common man. Fogerty’s distrust of the rich in this verse stems from the law which stated that active members in a university, be it undergraduate, graduate, of law school,

The usage of similes and alliteration in the lyrics “Like a Rolling Stone,” helps reflect the poetry in his work. The first and most vivid poetic device used throughout one of Bob Dylan’s top ten hits “Like a Rolling Stone” are similes. The best example of a simile in his lyrics appears in line sixteen through eighteen. “With no direction home / A complete unknown / Just like a rolling stone?” (Dylan 16-18). With Bob Dylan stating this negative comparison of a hopeless woman to a stone rolling down a hill, going out of control, supports his listeners with the thought of a lonely woman with no direction home. “So this phrase, “a rolling stone,” that meant a lack of material possessions, a lack of home, a lack of belonging for those who first sang it, became a symbol of liberation for the rock generation” (Bowie). These material ties weakened our vision and the ability to be able to see around us. Singing this phrase and ending it with a question allowed Bob Dylan to create the sense of freedom and the achievement of clearing his listeners visions to help them see through the illusions around them. The other poetic device that contributed to the admirable background of the lyrics in “Like a Rolling Stone” is the usage of alliteration. The first example of the occurrence with the same sound and letters is in lines one to three, “Once upon a time you dressed so fine / You threw the bums a dime in your prime, / Didn’t you?” (Dylan 1-3). With the repetition of -ime and -ine it presents us with a childlike feel towards the song. In addition to the childish feeling, it seems as if the woman approaches life in a much more simplistic way. “The short line length, the fairy-tale opening, the simple words and images, the straightforward aaaa repeating rhyme — all these elements work together to create the feeling of a children’s song, of a child’s world” (Bowie). The woman described in Bob Dylan’s lyrics assumes that

The song, “American Idiot” by Green Day, puts forward a very negative view on america based on a view of negative american traits. Green Day, the performing band, formed in 1986 in East Bay, California, originally under the name Sweet Children, and is known as part of the punk rock scene. “American Idiot” is a song off Green Day’s 7th studio album titled the same, “American Idiot”, which has since been converted into a musical, titled once again “American Idiot”. It essentially tells a story about three less than fortunate punk kids and their lives struggling with poverty, drugs and gangs in an inner city. A primary audience to the song would be Green Day fans, who would most likely enjoy the song even with negative conceptions of America,

During this time many people rose to prominence to include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and Malcom X. There are several verses within the poem that can easily be attributed to the ongoing struggle that the African Americans were facing, and that times would be changing. “For the loser now will be later to win, For the times they are a-changin’”(Dylan) and “Come senators, congressmen, Please heed the call Don’t stand in the doorway Don’t block up the hall… There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’ It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls” (Dylan) illustrates the struggle that African Americans were facing. During the time that the song written and the years following Dr. King, President Kennedy, and Malcom X were all assassinated for the role that they were playing during the events of the civil rights movement. The older generation was unable to accept that indeed the times were changing and were dragging their heels down a road that was vastly different from what they had travelled when they were younger. They soon found that there was nothing that they could do to stop the change.

Duluth Minnesota, May 24th 1941 Robert Allen Zimmerman (Bob Dylan) was born. 69 Years and over 45 albums later Bob Dylan has completely altered the face of popular music since his debut as a fresh faced folk singer in 1962. His early career forged him into an informal chronicler and then he later developed into an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest [Gray, 2006] and became a voice for a generation. His songs have been covered by many artists in a wide span of genres and he has remained a prominent and highly influential figure in the history of popular music over the past five decades. [Gates, David, 1997]