Nobel Prize Laureate Bob Dylan tells the story of wrongfully convicted Rubin “Hurricane” Carter through this poetic song, the content and structure of which allows Dylan to analyze the racial profiling and discrimination which defined this time period, and affected the African-American race as a whole. Dylan’s fame, well-deserved respect, and general experience protesting racial issues authenticates his argument, and along with other methods of persuasion, makes the decision to support racial equality more appealing to the audience. Dylan’s usage of literary devices such as synecdoches make the message of the work more comprehensible. Finally, the strong and at times exaggerated statements Dylan makes about the nature of Carter gives the audience …show more content…
Dylan’s very persuasive language is made possible by his master of rhetoric, or an effective use of words. Dylan uses no unnecessary words in this song, stating a clear point and purpose of each stanza, whether that be calling out the corruption of cops and the New Jersey justice system, spotlighting the lies of characters such as Bello and Bradley, or proving the likelihood the Carter committed none of the alleged crimes due to his strong character and set of morals. Rather than focussing on just one of three methods of persuasion, Dylan’s work exemplifies Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Dylan, a highly awarded artist and generally well-respected one due to his set of morals and supporter of humanities as shown in this song among many other protest pieces. Dylan uses this credibility to convince his audience that he knows best regarding racial equality due to his vast experience working with African-Americans such as Carter. In the sixteenth stanza, Dylan uses Pathos by writing: “Up to some paradise. Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice. And ride a horse along a trail. But then they took him to the jailhouse Where they tried to turn a man into a mouse.” This place Dylan writes about pleases our minds and helps us to escape from the chaos of everyday life, invoking emotion from the audience. The persuasion method of Logos is the most effective one in this song as it forces the audience to closely exam the validity of the allegations made against Rubin, namely in Dylan’s direct accusations of corruption of the justice system and police
When first reading, the reader is met with a dedication before the story begins, “To Bob Dylan.” Though it seems like a silly dedication by a simple fan of his work, it is actually apparent once reading the story that the influence of Bob Dylan added an extra layer. Joyce Carol Oates in an interview with the Wall Street Journal said, “The beauty of the song is that you can never quite comprehend it. His character serves as a reminder that as humans reality is inevitable no matter how much we attempt to deny it.
The 1960’s was one of the most controversial decades in American history because of not only the Vietnam War, but there was an outbreak of protests involving civil and social conditions all across college campuses. These protests have been taken to the extent where people either have died or have been seriously injured. However, during the 1960’s, America saw a popular form of art known as protest music, which responded to the social turmoil of that era, from the civil rights movement to the war in Vietnam. A veritable pantheon of musicians, such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan sang their songs to encourage union organizers to protest the inequities of their time, creating a diverse variety of popular protest music, which has reached out to the youthful generations everywhere demanding for a revolutionary change. The protest music took the children of the 1960’s to a completely new different level. Musicians of this generation were not going to sit and do nothing while the government lied to the people about what was going on in Vietnam. Instead, they took their guitar-strumming troubadours from the coffee houses, plugged them in, and sent the music and the message into the college dorm rooms and the homes of the youth of America. However, as decades went by, protest music does not have much of an impact as it use to because of the way things have changed over the years. Through the analysis of the music during the 1960’s, there shall be an understanding on how the different genres of protest music has affected social protesters based on how musicians have become the collective conscience of that generation through their lyrics and music and the main factors that contributed to the lack of popula...
Literature has always been arguably the most potent avenue for African Americans, and indeed all creatures who bear the burden of humanity, to relate the lunacy and unfairness of prejudice as well as demonstrate its devastating effects. Although slave narratives may perhaps be the first example of this kind of literature’s American variant to come to one’s mind, literature of the mid-nineteenth century was no less of a cogent tool for portraying the injustice faced by blacks in a manner meant to elicit indignation and spur social change. One such piece of so-called protest literature is the short story “Sonny’s Blues”, published in 1957. Penned by essayist, novelist, and former child evangelist James Baldwin, this story is about the relationship
The year is1965, 8 years into the Vietnam war and 2 years in the shadow of a presidential assassination, marked the inception of an artistic vision, cut to Vinyl. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 revisited is a testament to the state of America in the 1960s, using poetic devices, and engaging rock and roll music to capture the imagination of a breadth of people, unwittingly, it would seem, brought change to the minds of Americans. Opening their eyes to what was happening and inflicting a sense of new found justice in their hearts, Living vicariously through Bob Dylan’s intense imagery, due to the events unfolding in that period, People latched on to Dylan’s lyrics and imposed their own expression and feeling onto his songs.
middle of paper ... ... to American History. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. Goodman, Dean. “Dylan fans get tangled up in academic views,” Reuters (1998): February, p. PG.
African-Americans aged 12 and up are the most victimized group in America. 41.7 over 1,000 of them are victims of violent crimes, compared with whites (36.3 over 1,000). This does not include murder. Back then during the era of the Jim Crow laws, it was even worse. However, during that time period when there were many oppressed blacks, there were many whites who courageously defied against the acts of racism, and proved that the color of your skin should not matter. This essay will compare and contrast two Caucasian characters by the names of Hiram Hillburn (The Mississippi Trial, 1955) and Celia Foote (The Help), who also went against the acts of prejudice.
Black art forms have historically always been an avenue for the voice; from spirituals to work songs to ballads, pieces of literature are one way that the black community has consistently been able to express their opinions and communicate to society at large. One was this has been achieved is through civil disobedience meeting civil manners. In this case, it would be just acknowledging an issue through art and literature. On the other hand, there is art with a direct purpose - literature meant to spur action; to convey anger and shock; or to prompt empathy, based on a discontent with the status quo. That is, protest literature. Through the marriage of the personal and political voices in black poetry and music, the genre functions as a form
The song Hurricane by Bob Dylan is about the case of Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter which displays an example of the 60’s and mid-70’s turmoil and racism, and the major turning point in society to a bias and unjust system when it came to racial conflict. The song Hurricane by Bob Dylan impacted the black majority of american society because the song was written after an arrested African American boxer, Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter, who was falsely accused of a triple homicide in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey on June 17th, 1966. Later, released from prison following a petition of Habeas Corpus after spending nearly 20 years in prison. He was sent with his friend John Artis, who offered to drive Rubin home on the night of the murders. Two eyewitnesses who were also criminals for burglary,
During the height of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, already-renowned songwriter Bob Dylan composed one of his most prominent works, called “Only a Pawn in Their Game”, as both a memorial and personal commentary on racial discrimination and victimization. As he wrote the lyrics, the communities of African-Americans were steamed over the violent death of one of their activists, Medgar Evers, by a gunman. Dylan composed his song to both pay tribute to Evers, but also to call out the act itself, attempting to signify that the killer themselves was also a victim, the true guilt belonging to the white elite, driving people like the gunman to commit acts against the growing Movement. To have a song such as “Only a Pawn in Their Game” to be as famous as it was/is, there must follow three key factors: a strong theme, especially with a contemporary subject, to
A key part of the Civil Rights and Vietnam War protest era’s culture, topical songs comment on recent events in politics and social news. These anthems are often protest songs that offer both the original news story as well as the singer’s own analysis and commentary. Bob Dylan wrote many of these, such as “Only a Pawn in Their Game.” This song takes the story of a poor white man killing an innocent black man and instead of writing about the racism of the white Americans against black Americans, he discusses how elite white politicians and businessmen encourage racism and fearmongering to keep the poor whites down with the black Americans. This is a subversion of the typical protest song which discusses the surface level injustice of a hate crime, and by focusing on the poor white as a “pawn” in the game played by elites, Dylan
The civil rights movement may have technically ended in the nineteen sixties, but America is still feeling the adverse effects of this dark time in history today. African Americans were the group of people most affected by the Civil Rights Act and continue to be today. Great pain and suffering, though, usually amounts to great literature. This period in American history was no exception. Langston Hughes was a prolific writer before, during, and after the Civil Rights Act and produced many classic poems for African American literature. Hughes uses theme, point of view, and historical context in his poems “I, Too” and “Theme for English B” to expand the views on African American culture to his audience members.
Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.
To see them as anything else is to forget the bulk of the art form’s history… However, since the advent of writing, a poetry that is written primarily for the printed page has evolved down some very different paths from its oral counterpart.” Moreover, since lyrics are not expected to stand on their own, without the musicality, they seem “disembodied and flat.” Therefore, songs and poetry are better left separately, but when exceptions arise, they should be embraced because “they are likely combining the best of both sides of the art form and as such are truly wondrous to behold.” Dylan is such
In all three, they address the issues with the system’s discrimination against a specific race, despite claims and laws to give each a fair treatment. They also present the issue of the quickness to imprison. Mass incarceration is the result of the legal system throwing people in jail for things such as interracial marriage, lack of evidence and investigation, and petty drug crimes - all of which the play, book, and documentary aim to raise awareness for. With racism and legal system shortcomings ever so present throughout the last century, it is no surprise the incarceration rates continue to increase, along with the number of incarcerated
This articles brings lyrics from a song that was previously considered offensive, which is now clean by today’s standards, and effectively argues for freedom of speech.