Bob dylan's protest song against the Vietnam war

PROTEST SONG

The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954 (though conflict in the region stretched back to the mid-1940s), after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued against the backdrop of an intense Cold War between two global superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War; more than half were Vietnamese civilians. By 1969, at the peak of U.S. involvement in the war, more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were involved in the Vietnam conflict. Growing opposition to the war in the United States led to bitter divisions among Americans, both before and after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. In 1975, communist forces seized control of Saigon, ending the Vietnam War, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.

The Vietnam War spurred a protest movement that spread among the student movement in the 1960s. And songs were an important part of that protest.

In the early 1960s, the folk-song movement was already well-established with artists like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan reaching a relatively small but devoted audience. Many folk singers were closely connected with the civil rights movement which was reaching its climax with mass demonstrations against segregation in Southern cities like Selma and Birmingham. Songs like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" by Bob Dylan and "Birmingham Sunday" by Joan Baez emphasised the losses in the civil rights struggle.

And the most famous song of this era - Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind - had as its last verse "how many years can a people exist before they're allowed to be free." Dylan's anti-war songs, such as Masters of War, were more general than specific about Vietnam.

Poetic genre :

• The poetic genre is lyric
• Lyric is a short 4-60 lines poem that expresses ones feelings towards a certain subjet
• He uses words such as « my »
• He is putting in great effort to prove to the world that what is happening socially/economically is wrong
• Dylan is a man who believes in equality of sexes,religion,race etc.and back in the 1960’s there was not much appreciation for peolple who were « different »

Technical Structure :

• The song uses an ABCBDB rhyme theme scheme
• It emphasizes and flows through the song which sets a further understanding of the message

The rhythm is very slow which brings out emotion and sensitivity to the audience

Blowin’in the Wind has a very slow tempo. This suits the song : through the lyrics,Dylan implies that people aren’t able to find the solutions to very serious problems simply because they aren’t willing to stop and look for them. He seems to believe that the answers are out in the world, surrounding, everyone, but going unnoticed.

...