Lyric Poets 1 BOB DYLAN - A HARD RAIN’S GONNA FALL

A SOCIAL-PROTEST, FOLK BALLAD

To be distinct in character, works of literature, novels, plays and poems use poetic and literary devices such as imagery and symbols to help convey and illustrate the overall theme of the stories to readers, viewers and listeners. 

Musicians, poets and lyricists use alliteration and repetition to help certain verses become indelible in the listener's mind.

Bob Dylan’s allegorical Folk Ballad, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" shows how these literary devices are used to express his views on war. At first listen, the song, is ambiguous. It is cryptic and obscure. Yet it is poetic.  It is full of imagery and symbols, alliteration and repetition. 

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" was one of three social protest songs Dylan recorded on ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan', which he wrote at the age of 21 in 1962 at the time of USA’s unnecessary and illegitimate war in Vietnam.

The  Vietnam war, called (in Vietnam) the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”, was a protracted conflict from 1954 to 1975 between the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the 'Viet Cong', against the government of South Vietnam and its ally the United States. 

The economic and human costs of the long inhuman conflict in Vietnam was apocalyptic. It was a barbarous, inhuman and exhausting war for all involved, and claimed between 2.5 million to 4 million lives, most of them Vietnamese civilians, however, in the end, the 'United States' was defeated and withdrew from Vietnam. 

The line in the song, “I met a young woman whose body was burning” was prophetic and prescient, because it was ten years later, in 1972, that the world would see the unforgettable photo of the little Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, running naked from her napalmed village. This image would drive home to the world, the horrors that that US was inflicting on Viet Nam.

Bob Dylan was perhaps also concerned about a possible nuclear war, as tensions between Russia and the U.S., which came to be called the Cuban Missile Crisis, peaked in October 1962. And ‘Hard Rain’ could possibly refer to nuclear-rain - radioactive fallout.

HARD RAIN’S A’ GONNA FALL

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? 
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warning
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing
Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, what will you do now, my blue-eyed son? 

Oh, what will you do now, my darling young one?

I’m a-going back out ’fore the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the colour, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXn9ZKPx6CY

Patti Smith - Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize performance 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941PHEJHCwU