The iconic singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is the author of the song “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which appears on his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963). The song confronts the injustices and brutalities that beset the world; as such, it qualifies as protest music or activist art. The song also meets the criteria for a lyric, as it reflects Dylan’s views on the world’s problems and the potential solution. Like other folk musicians, such as Pete Seger and Woody Guthrie, Dylan uses music to send the message that people need to stop perpetuating destructive, deadly norms. The song is one of Dylan’s several signature works and aptly reflects the activist persona he later dropped.

Due to the substance of Dylan’s lyrics, many people treat his songs like poems—that is, they give his words the same attention that people apply to poetry. There are books of his song lyrics, and, in Why Bob Dylan Matters (2017), Harvard University Professor Robert F. Thomas compares him to classic poets like Virgil and Catullus. This study guide will refer to and treat the song as a poem throughout.

Poet Biography

Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota on May 24, 1941. His father co-owned an appliance and furniture store, but Dylan did not want to own a business: he wanted to be a musician. Inspired by a cross-section of singers, from Woody Guthrie to Little Richard, Dylan played in rock bands as a teenager. After a stint at the University of Minnesota, he moved to New York and released his debut album, Bob Dylan, in 1962. His second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, came out in 1963, and it featured hits like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”; it put Dylan on the path toward stardom.

By the mid-1960s, Dylan gravitated toward electric rock music and cutting lyrics, and away from the plainspoken activism of acoustic folk music. Although fans and the folk community upbraided him, Dylan continued to produce legendary songs such as “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965) and “Mr. Tambourine Man” (1965). Throughout his career, Dylan switched genres and personas. John Semely writes, “Dylan’s identity mutated—from warbling folkie to motor-mouthed rock poet to country troubadour, Christian evangelist, and beyond” (see: Further Reading & Resources). In 2016, Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature—the first singer-songwriter to win the honor. In 2020, Dylan released the album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, and he became the first musician to have a Top 40 album in each decade since the 1960s.

Dylan had notable romantic relationships with the folk singer Joan Baez and actress Edie Sedgwick—the muse for Pop artist Andy Warhol. Dylan famously quarreled with Warhol and the English folk singer Donovan. He developed relationships with artists like the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Dylan wrote the experimental Tarantula (1971), the memoir Chronicles: Volume One (2004), and a collection of essays, The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022). He acted in movies, including the western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and is the center of many documentaries. He is also the subject of countless books and studies. The number of people analyzing and studying Dylan produced the term, Dylanologists. Married twice, Dylan has several children. One son, Jakob Dylan, was the lead singer of the 1990s rock band, The Wallflowers.

Poem Text

Dylan, Bob. “Blowin’ in the Wind.” 1963. bobdylan.com.

Summary

Dylan’s poem is a series of questions about the troubling world. In each stanza, the speaker asks about the injustices ailing society, and in the last two lines of all three stanzas, the speaker repeats the same answer to the questions.

In Stanza 1, the speaker wonders how many roads a person has to walk down to qualify as a human in the eyes of others. They ask how many seas a white dove has to fly across before she can rest in the sand. They wonder how many cannonballs will destroy, maim, and kill before people stop using them. A person can find the answers to these in the wind.

In Stanza 2, the speaker thinks about the number of years a mountain can remain before the sea washes it away. They wonder how many years a person can live before other people give that person liberty. The speaker asks about the amount of times a person can look away and act like they do not see what is happening in the world. As in Stanza 1, the answers to these questions lie in the blowing wind.

For Stanza 3, the speaker wants to know how many times a person has to look up before they notice the sky. The speaker wants to know how many ears a person needs to hear people crying. They wonder how many people must die before people realize that there are too many deaths in the world. As in Stanzas 1 and 2, the answers to the questions in Stanza 3 exist in the wind. As the speaker says, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind / The answer is blowin’ in the wind” (Lines 23-24).