AI ToolsNew
Tools to make learning and teaching easier
Question about this poem?
Have a question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
Ask us
Ask us
Ask a question
Ask a question
Ask a question
-
“Blowin’ in the Wind” Introduction
-
"Blowin' in the Wind," Bob Dylan's classic 1962 protest song, has had a long, rich life as an anthem for causes from civil rights to nuclear disarmament. In this song, the speaker poses a series of huge questions about the persistence of war and oppression, and then responds with one repeated, cryptic reply: "The answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind." Finding an end to human cruelty, the song suggests, is a matter of understanding a truth that's all around—but paradoxically impossible to grasp.
-
-
“Blowin’ in the Wind” Summary
-
How many paths does a person have to walk along before they're treated like a human being? How many oceans does a white dove have to fly over before she can rest on dry land? And how many times must weapons of war be fired before they're outlawed forever? The answer to these questions is just moving through the air, my friend, it's just moving through the air.
How long can a mountain be around before it crumbles into the ocean? How long can some human beings be around before they're finally freed from oppression? And how many times can a person look away from that oppression, acting like they simply don't see it? The answer to these questions is just moving through the air, my friend, it's just moving through the air
How many times does a person have to look up before they actually see the sky? How many ears does a single person have to have before they'll actually listen to other people weeping? And how many people have to die for that same person to understand that there's too much death in the world? The answer to these questions is just moving through the air, my friend, it's just moving thorugh the air.
-
-
“Blowin’ in the Wind” Themes
-
The Senselessness of War and Oppression
Bob Dylan’s classic protest song “Blowin’ in the Wind” addresses the incomprehensible cruelty of war and oppression. In this song, the speaker asks a series of unanswerable questions about how long it will take for humanity to establish lasting peace, compassion, and justice, and then repeatedly concludes: “The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” This ambiguous reply suggests the complexities of the question itself: if the answer is “blowin’ in the wind,” it’s either right there in front of people or it's impossible to grasp—or both! That paradox also reflects on the nature of human cruelties, those obvious evils that humanity can’t seem to stop perpetuating.
The speaker presents listeners with a series of big questions about war, oppression, and indifference throughout the song, treating these questions both as worldwide problems and the problems of every individual. To that end, the song's language is grand and general, and the use of biblically-inflected images—for instance, the searching dove as a symbol of peace—suggests the scale and depth of the questions at hand; these are issues, the song implies, that go right to the roots of human nature itself.
Of course, these questions also work on a more personal scale. Stopping war and oppression is the individual, internal work of “a man,” the song suggests, as much as that of a government or a nation; big cruelties can grow from individual attitudes to the world.
The solution to all these problems, the song repeatedly insists, is both ever-present and impossible to grasp: it’s “blowin’ in the wind,” at once as obvious and as invisible as the air itself. This paradoxical non-answer suggests bewilderment in the face of human cruelty, but also a strange sort of hopefulness. One can’t pin the wind down, but it is everywhere.
Perhaps the song is suggesting that people need to think and perceive in new, freer ways in order to break out of their old patterns of war and violence. That this is a job both for humanity at large and for every “man” offers a grain of hope in the song as well: if individual people can think in novel ways and come to understand how the answer might be “blowin’ in the wind,” maybe an end to war, cruelty, and oppression is possible after all.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-24
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Blowin’ in the Wind”
-
Lines 1-6
How many roads ...
... they’re forever banned?The first stanza of "Blowin' in the Wind" sets a pattern—a pattern about patterns, if you will. This is a song about a big mystery: why do people keep killing and oppressing each other, even though anyone can see that war and injustice are terribly wrong? The song's repetitions speak to the bewildering perpetuation of human evil.
The speaker begins by setting a pattern of rhetorical questioning, asking huge, unanswerable questions. These questions aren't just the same in flavor, but also in their phrasing: their parallel structure means that each question starts with "How many" and comes to a central turning point at the word "Before":
How many [...] must [...]
Before [...]The speaker begins by asking: "How many roads must a man walk down / Before you call him a man?" That's an internal question, dealing with personal choices. Those symbolic "roads" (representing journeys, choices, and life experiences) suggest the emotional exploration that might bring this "man" to maturity. In other words, how many things does someone have to experience or go through before they're considered an adult, taken seriously, granted respect, treated as a full human being?
The next question broadens out to a wider world, asking: "Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail / Before she sleeps in the sand?" In this line, made quiet and gentle by soft sibilant /s/ sounds, the speaker uses the dove, an ancient symbol of peace, to evoke a long (and ongoing) journey toward world peace. In the biblical story of Noah's Ark, Noah sends a dove in search of dry land; it returns bearing an olive branch. Here, the implication is that this dove will have to fly over many seas before being able to rest on dry land. On a symbolic level, this means that peace may be a long time coming. (See the "Symbols" section of this guide for even more on the dove.)
The speaker builds on the established pattern even further in his next question: "Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannonballs fly / Before they're forever banned?" This question relates to war—and war that's been going on for centuries, judging by those old-fashioned "cannonballs." The speaker is asking, how many wars do people have to have before they stop fighting and/or creating such deadly weapons?
This question also builds on the questions that came before it. Just as the white dove must "sail" over the sea, cannonballs "fly" over the land. The image of these weapons of war flying near that lovely dove is a frightening one, one that suggests human beings threaten to destroy any hope for peace through their repeated turn to war and violence.
The speaker's huge symbols—roads, doves, seas—give the song a feeling of grand scale. These questions are broad and general, to do with everyone. But do they have answers?
-
Lines 7-8
The answer, my ...
... in the wind
Unlock all 273 words of this analysis of Lines 7-8 of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Lines 9-12
How many years ...
... to be free? -
Lines 13-16
Yes, ’n’ how ...
... in the wind -
Lines 17-20
How many times ...
... hear people cry? -
Lines 21-24
Yes, ’n’ how ...
... in the wind
-
-
“Blowin’ in the Wind” Symbols
-
Roads
Roads (in this song as elsewhere) symbolize choices and life journeys. In asking "How many roads must a man walk down / Before you call him a man?" the speaker wonders what it takes to achieve true humanity. How many paths must one explore? How much hard experience does one have to go through to understand one's own humanity—and the humanity of others? The image of roads suggests that this journey to full humanity is a long and difficult one. It also suggests that it's a choice: no one is going to make this "man" go on the road, he's going to have to make that decision himself.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2: “How many roads must a man walk down / Before you call him a man?”
-
The Dove
Doves—gentle birds with strong homing instincts—are an ancient symbol of peace. The reader may be familiar with this symbolism from hearing about political "hawks and doves"—war-hawks versus peace-loving doves. But 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. The dove may be looking for the "dry land" of a whole new landscape, a peaceful world where she might finally sleep, for some time.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 3-4: “Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail / Before she sleeps in the sand?”
-
The Mountain and the Sea
The mountain of line 9, slowly eroding into the sea, 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. The sea may not be able to destroy the mountain in one blow, but in its constant fluid motion (as contrasted with the immobility of the mountain), it will inevitably wear it away eventually—even if it takes many, many lifetimes.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 9-10: “How many years can a mountain exist / Before it’s washed to the sea?”
-
Cannonballs
The cannonballs of line 5 symbolize war and violence. This song was written in 1962, when cannonballs were no longer a feature of war; Dylan's choice to use cannonballs as an image of war thus emphasizes that war is not a modern problem, but one with roots deep in human history. Simultaneously, these cannonballs tell readers something about how the speaker feels about war: in using this archaic image, the speaker seems to ask, "Shouldn't we be past cannonballs"—and by implication wartime violence—"by now?"
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 5-6: “Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly / Before they’re forever banned?”
-
The Wind
The refrain of this song returns and returns to the wind, a mighty natural force with a lot of complex symbolism attached to it. The wind is both ever present and impossible to get a grip on. One can't hold it, but one can feel it; one knows it's there, but it's invisible. As such, it can be taken, in one interpretation, as a symbol of that which is pretty tough to symbolize: new, untried, and freer ways of thinking. The "answer" the speaker seeks doesn't seem to be an answer one can write down in a book. It will come only to those who can prepare themselves to understand the world in completely new and ever-changing ways.
The speaker's earlier biblical references also hint that this wind may be to do with spirit: the unknowable presence of God. To think in ways that prevent war, perhaps humanity has to tap into a larger, kinder, and sometimes incomprehensible being or way of thinking/being.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 7-8: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind / The answer is blowin’ in the wind”
- Lines 15-16: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind / The answer is blowin’ in the wind”
- Lines 23-24: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind / The answer is blowin’ in the wind”
-
-
“Blowin’ in the Wind” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Alliteration
Alliteration marks a distinct difference between poetry and normal speech. Day-to-day conversations don't tend to use a lot of emphatic, repeated sounds, so alliteration can help to make a poem feel musical. Here, alliteration (and its cousin sibilance—examined more closely in its own entry) also supports the poem's themes and ideas.
The strongest alliteration in this poem is on /m/ sounds, which appear again and again in the poem's circling questions. A pattern of /m/ sounds connects the words "many," "must," and "man," suggesting that the speaker's questions have a lot to do with repetition themselves: how long do these recurrent patterns of cruelty and ignorance have to continue before change comes? That initial /m/ sound also links the poem's archetypal everyman to the slowly eroding "mountain" in line 9, a connection which hints that this mountain might symbolize seemingly unchangeable human institutions.
There's also some scattered alliteration on /t/ sounds, which connect the many "times" a man can "turn" away from injustice, and the "too" many deaths it will "take" "till" he's willing to change.
These repeating sounds make thematic connections, but they also add to the song's musicality. Simple repetitions and simple language stand in contrast to the huge complexity of the questions the song is addressing.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 1: “many,” “must,” “man”
- Line 2: “man”
- Line 3: “many,” “must,” “sail”
- Line 4: “sleeps,” “sand”
- Line 5: “many,” “must,” “fly”
- Line 6: “Before,” “forever,” “banned”
- Line 9: “many,” “mountain”
- Line 13: “many,” “times,” “man,” “turn”
- Line 17: “many,” “must,” “man”
- Line 18: “see,” “sky”
- Line 19: “many,” “must,” “man”
- Line 21: “take till”
- Line 22: “too”
-
Allusion
Unlock all 229 words of this analysis of Allusion in “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Assonance
-
Metaphor
-
Paradox
-
Refrain
-
Repetition
-
Rhetorical Question
-
Sibilance
-
-
“Blowin’ in the Wind” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Blowin' in the wind
Blowin' in the wind-
(Location in poem: Line 7: “blowin’ in the wind”)
This purposely ambiguous phrase has a double meaning: the "answer" the speaker seeks is, like the wind, both always there and impossible to hold onto.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Blowin’ in the Wind”
-
Form
"Blowin' in the Wind" breaks into three stanzas, each an eight-line octet. In the first of these, the speaker introduces huge, unanswerable questions about war and peace; in the second, the speaker gets a little more pointed, grounding observations in the actions of people rather than archetypal doves and roads; in the third, the speaker is more pointed still, honing in on the individual "man" and his willful ignorance of human suffering.
Though the focus of each stanza shifts and narrows slightly, each stanza strongly resembles the last in its form. The speaker's circling refrain makes up the final two lines of each stanza, and thus means that every stanza returns to that ineffable answer, "blowin' in the wind."
Within stanzas, too, there's a repeated rhythm of questioning: the speaker always adds on to the initial question with a "Yes, 'n'" (i.e., "and"). These repetitions add to the feeling that this speaker is turning over questions that just can't be answered easily. No matter how many questions the speaker asks, the speaker always has to return to the slippery wind in the end.
-
Meter
"Blowin’ in the Wind" as a written text doesn’t have a consistent meter. However, "Blowin’ in the Wind" isn’t just a written text. It’s a song, and its melody emphasizes and de-emphasizes, stresses and unstresses, certain words throughout.
For example, the noun that appears directly after "many" in each verse always jumps up the scale, the higher note adding emphasis to "roads," "seas," "times," and so forth. This draws listeners' attention to the diversity of situations that the speaker (or, rather, singer) is presenting. The word "man" also gets more oomph in each verse, adding emphasis to the human element of the song.
Take lines 1-2, which, again, don't have an actual meter, but essentially pattern the stressed words like this when sung:
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?The melody pulls listeners' attention to many of the song's thematic ideas.
Also note that one of the differences between poetry that's set to music and poetry that isn't is that the melody may add to or change the number of syllables in a word. So, for instance, the line that looks like this on the page:
How many roads must a man walk down
Sounds like this when it's sung:
How many roads must a man wa-alk down
Music makes the words more flexible, as the singer can stretch them around the melody and rhythm in unique ways. In terms of sound, the song isn't a thumping march; it's a lyrical lament, and its naturalistic meter as sung makes that clear.
There are technically 10 syllables in the above line (though "many" is sung so quickly as to almost constitute a single beat). All the lines starting with "How" have 9-11 syllables, and these lines are always longer than the lines beginning with "Before," which have 6-8 syllables.
One can find this pattern—a longer line followed by a shorter line—in everything from nursery rhymes to old ballads. In choosing this rhythm, the speaker connects his song to ancient tradition, just as he connects his questions to ancient themes.
-
Rhyme Scheme
"Blowin' in the Wind" uses an unobtrusive rhyme scheme that conceals some surprising complexities. Two things stay constant throughout the whole song: the even lines of every stanza always rhyme with each other, and the final two lines of each stanza always end on the word "wind" (technically creating a couplet). The first and third stanzas follow this pattern (albeit using different rhyme sounds before that final repetition of "wind"):
ABCBDBEE
In context, the first stanza looks like this:
[...] down A
[...] man? B
[...] sail C
[...] sand? B
[...] fly D
[...] banned? B
[...] wind E
[...] wind EThe final two rhymes are, again, identical rhymes, as the speaker simply repeats the phrase "blowin' in the wind." Between this repetition and the repetition of that B sound, this stanza's rhyme pattern circles back on itself over and over, like someone turning a complicated question over in their head.
The rhymes here, and throughout the poem, are also all full and clear; the poem never uses slant or half rhymes. This makes the speaker's words sound simpler than they actually are, and reflects the nature of the questions being asked—questions that, on the surface, seem straightforward, yet get at the complicated heart of the human condition.
The speaker breaks the above pattern very slightly in stanza 2. Whereas above the first and third lines don't rhyme with each other ("down" vs. "sail"), in the second stanza they do—again as an identical rhyme ("exist" and "exist"). On the one hand, this identical rhyme draws attention to the symbolic relationship between the images here—that of a mountain crumbling into the sea, and that of people breaking free from oppression.
A more formal or stylized poem would be unlikely to rhyme "exist" with "exist" in lines 9 and 11, but it makes perfect sense for an everyday speaker with insistent questions to frame those questions in the exact same words. The rhyme scheme here thus feels simple, even though it isn't, because the words that do rhyme tend to repeat their rhymes over and over: insisting just as the speaker insists, in a natural, everyday voice.
There's also a hint of hope in the rhyme scheme here. Because each stanza ends with the same word—"wind"—every stanza ultimately rhymes with each other. Perhaps discords may someday resolve into harmony after all.
-
-
“Blowin’ in the Wind” Speaker
-
This song's speaker has a reflective, wise voice, and sees the big questions of the world from both an intimate and a grand perspective. This speaker doesn't tell readers anything about themselves directly, but the reader can tell this is a person with a passionate, idealistic, melancholy soul, who's disappointed by humanity's failures. The speaker is focused on questions about how to bring about an end to the suffering that humans cause each other, but isn't naive: the speaker knows that these problems are as old as humanity itself, and that the answers can't be found in any one philosophy. The speaker uses symbols from both nature and biblical tradition, reaching out to that which is bigger than any one human to find guidance. By keeping the speaker nonspecific, the song can be taken slightly differently by all who hear it; it isn't tied to a single, unique perspective, but rather to the human condition itself.
-
-
“Blowin’ in the Wind” Setting
-
The landscapes that "Blowin' in the Wind" evokes are archetypal ones, drawing on big, general ideas rather than specific places. The speaker sings of roads, seas, and mountains; these are symbolic types of place rather than real places, and they help to connect the song to themes that feel universal. One might read the setting of this song as the whole world. It doesn't matter what mountain one looks at or what sea one sails: the problems this song touches upon are the same everywhere.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Blowin’ in the Wind”
Literary Context
Bob Dylan (1941-present) is one of the most important figures in American music, and his long and varied career continues to this day. Born Robert Zimmerman, he renamed himself after one of his heroes, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and rose to prominence as a folk singer in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. "Blowin' in the Wind," recorded in 1962 and released in 1963 as part of the album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," was one of his first big hits, and it became an anthem of its era.
Dylan's musical evolution has shocked (and even enraged) his fans as often as it has impressed them; an early folk audience famously booed him when he dared to introduce electric guitar to his act. But the puckish, experimental Dylan has never been thrown off by criticism, and over the course of his career he's explored a wide range of genres and styles, from folk to rock to gospel—and even made a Christmas album. His music has influenced just about every musician who's followed him; like the Beatles, he remade the entire musical landscape.
He's perhaps best-known for his distinctive vocal style and his cryptic, elegant, sometimes surreal lyrics. Critics like Christopher Ricks have often read his songs as poetry, and indeed, Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.
Historical Context
When Dylan wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" in 1962, America was embroiled in the Vietnam War abroad and in massive protests at home. The civil rights and second-wave feminist movements were in full swing, peace protestors marched for nuclear disarmament, and the more conservative older generation was in conflict with the freedom-loving younger one. In short, it was a time of both disillusionment and new idealism. The grand scale of "Blowin' in the Wind," with its archetypal images of mountains and doves, speaks to the power of the problems 1960s America grappled with.
"Blowin' in the Wind" fits right into its cultural moment both in form and in subject matter. The idealistic protest movements brought with them a revival in folk music traditions. Folk music was seen as a people's art form, and many musicians of the period used folk songs to register their discontent with the status quo. The themes of "Blowin' in the Wind"—the longing for an end to war and injustice, the difficulty of breaking from oppressive traditions, and the need for utterly new and less rigid ways of thinking—caught the contemporary imagination, and the song's huge popularity speaks to the political and aesthetic chords it struck in its time.
-
More “Blowin’ in the Wind” Resources
-
External Resources
-
Bob Dylan's Official Website — Check out Bob Dylan's current website.
-
A Historical Interpretation — This page from History.com interprets the song as an important moment in political as well as artistic history.
-
A Times Profile of Dylan — A recent New York Times article on Dylan's artistic life and legacy.
-
A Short Biography — The Poetry Foundation's brief biography of Bob Dylan.
-
Bob Dylan Performs the Song — Watch a video of Bob Dylan singing this song in 1963, not long after he wrote it.
-
-
