"The mountain […] is a symbol of those human institutions that keep war and oppression in place. The stony mountain is all that resists change: the shape of government and history, certainly, but also the rocky terrain inside people's hearts. The slow, persistent erosive power of the ocean, on the other hand, symbolizes the action of internal and external change." https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/bob-dylan/blowin-in-the-wind

The dove is a white bird that corresponds to colomba in Italian. It usually symbolizes peace. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dove <br /> "There's also a reference here to a specific dove: the biblical dove of Noah's Ark, which flew out from the Ark to seek dry land and returned bearing a hopeful olive branch. The symbolism of the dove here suggests that the change the speaker hopes for may not be easy to come by" (https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/bob-dylan/blowin-in-the-wind).

Setting the scene: the song was released in 1963 and included in the album The Freewhelin' Bob Dylan. All of Dylan's "most famous political songs were written [...] between January 1962 and October 1963" and "those [...] fixed him in the popular imagination" as a protest songwriter (Lynskey, 2010, 67). The historical context in which the song was released is essential to understand its meaning: during the 1950s the civil rights movement against racial segregation started to gain momentum, reaching its highest point precisely in 1963. Indeed, in that year: * Desegregation protests spread throughout the Southern states over more than 100 cities. The most famous was the March on Washington: it was organized by the "Big Six" of the civil rights movement (Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, J. Lewis, P. Randolph, R. Wilkins, W. Young), attended by more than 250.000 protesters (including Bob Dylan). It was in this occasion that the renowned "I have a dream" speech took place. * On June 12, President Kennedy announced he would present a civil rights bill to Congress, which was eventually passed the following year under the name of the Civil Rights Act. https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement

It is important to bear in mind that protests were not only motivated by the insufferable racial segregation, but they were also anti-war oriented: the Vietnam war (1955-1975), which had been raging for ten years by the mid-1960s, was felt as an unnecessary conflict, especially by students and young people, who were the ones recruited in the U.S. army. Indeed, "the average age of an American soldier in Vietnam was 19" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z6dk8hv/revision/4 ).

Here is the chorus of the song: to all the questions posed, the songwriter is not able to answer. In fact, the answer is as elusive as the wind and impossible to grasp. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/bob-dylan/blowin-in-the-wind

Another interesting element to point out is the relationship that Dylan seems to have with the audience: as previously remarked, this song converts Dylan into a spokesman of the common people, a "primus inter pares" if you wish, who makes use of his art to denounce inequality and social struggles. He does not think of himself as a custodian of a hidden truth no one else has discovered: just as everybody else, he does not have a clue about why discrimination and wars occur.

Your turn: if there are no answers, why asking questions? Do you think there is value in asking questions that cannot be answered?

According to you, what is Bob Dylan criticizing in these verses?

Once again, Dylan calls for equality between Black and White people and (ironically) challenges the audience to specify the number of years that takes for someone to be free.

This is the opening of the song, which starts and procedes by asking multiple rhetorical questions to the listeners. In this case, Bob Dylan is calling into question the essence of humanity by describing an activity as simple as walking. The "roads" may hint at the long history of difficulties and hardships that Black people have experienced. The call to equality is unmistakable. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/bob-dylan/blowin-in-the-wind

According to you, what makes us human?

Here, the reference to the Vietnam war is explicit through the usage of the key word cannonballs.

The repetition of "yes" at the beginning of many verses indicates the usage of a specific rhetorical device — the anaphora. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anaphora

Notice how the structure "before […] how many" is repeated throughout all the song. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/bob-dylan/blowin-in-the-wind

This word presents a common linguistic phenomenon called g-dropping: it consists in the drop of the -g at the end of certain words. In fact, no -g is actually "dropped" because the 'g' is not even pronounced. All English speakers g-dropped, but the frequency of this phenomenon is tied to class belonging, race, sex and degree of formality. Generally, it is more common among lower social classes. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000878.html

What does this mean in the context of this song? Answer: By adopting g-dropping and thus language-wise, Bob Dylan positions himself in the tradition of folk music and becomes the spokesman of the people.

'n': abbreviation for "and" (Cambridge Dictionary) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/n

Till means until and they are largely interchangeable; however, it is not its abbreviated form because till predates the longer word. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/should-you-use-until-or-till-or-til