How Bob Dylan Writes a Protest Song

this video is brought to you by curiositystream if you sign up to curiositystream with the link in the description you'll also get access to nebula where you can watch all of my videos early and ad free oh hi there this week's video is going to be a bit different than usual bob dylan is one of my favorite musicians and for that matter one of my favorite artists in any medium i've already done three videos about him and i'll likely do more in the future but youtube's copyright system is particularly harsh when it comes to dylan's music and that can make it incredibly difficult to create a proper video essay on him so this week we're going to look at dylan from a purely literary perspective i won't be playing any song clips throughout and we won't even talk about the musical arrangements instead we're going to read some dylan lyrics on their own as we would any other piece of literature dylan is an artist who always rewards close lyrical readings and i think this way i'll be able to dig into the song furthermore i'm hoping that this can show you a little bit about how to do a close reading of songs on your own if that's the sort of thing you're interested in this is something completely different than i usually do and i don't blame you if you don't like it but hey i don't want to live in a world where artists and creators can't experiment with their work so now that that's out of the way we can get to the song in question this week the song that i want to talk about is the lonesome death of hattie carroll i've included links to the original recording of the song as well as my personal favorite recording in the description so if you want to pause me and give it a listen you can go right ahead in the meantime i'm gonna drop the theme music before we can get into the lyrics of the lonesome death of hattie carroll will need to set the scene a little bob dylan wrote the song in 1963 when he was still on his way to becoming a counter-cultural iconoclast the world around dylan was in the midst of an unprecedented social upheaval thanks to the civil rights movement dylan had become a part of that movement and even joined martin luther king jr's august 28th march on washington performing on the very podium where king gave his famous i have a dream speech the day after that march as dylan was riding home to new york he read this article in the new york times the piece tells of the sentencing of william zantzinger a white tobacco farmer who killed a black barmaid named hattie harrell in february 1963. carol had not brought zantzinger's drink fast enough and so he struck her with a toy cane shortly after carol had a stroke and eight hours after that she died in a hospital zanzinger went through the court system and he was tried the very day that bob dylan sang in front of washington and mlk said that he dreamed of america rising up and living out its creed zanzinger's sentence six months in prison for manslaughter reading about this phil dillon with righteous indignation and so he decided to put it into song the first thing to note about the lonesome death of hattie carroll is its lyrical structure it's made up of four verses each broken up by a short chorus the first and last verse described the incident in question and zanzinger's sentencing while the middle two characterized zanzinger and carol on a surface level each of these verses seems to be a straightforward accounting of the events modified with a bit of artistic license including a slight change to zantzinger's name it looks like dylan is mimicking the new york times article he read a seemingly factual retelling of a series of events but upon closer inspection we can see that dylan bakes a number of pieces of political protest into his storytelling and then there's the chorus an ambiguous set of lines that can almost seem to undercut the very message of the song put together this creates a piece that is very much of its time but also a song that looks forward and questions the systems we live in today and the ways that we still go about responding to tragedy bob dylan opens the song right in the middle of the action with his renamed william zanzinger caning hattie carroll the first two lines already established the class differences between carol and zanzinger as shown by the diamond ring around zanzinger's finger dylan also describes the action as a twirling of the cane this gives it an air of casual nonchalance further characterizing zanzinger as heartless when it comes to carol the rest of this verse is straightforward showing zanzinger being taken into custody there is a change in the facts here in real life zanzinger was not specifically booked for first degree murder but i think that's really important to note that as journalistic as the song may seem bob dylan is specifically not trying to tell a true story dylan is creating a fiction based on real events he's turning history into a parable with the goal of conveying a moral lesson and this lesson is more meaningful and more impactful if zanzinger's murder is done with intent in the next verse dylan will continue to mold the story to fit his lesson as we learn more about william zinger one of the small things that dylan does to distance his story from the real events is modify william zantzinger's name in the song dylan omits a t from the middle of it this creates a small level of distance but dylan's refusal to modify the name further also shows the spite that dylan carries for the real man the portrait that dylan paints of his zanzinger character in the second verse shows us how he really feels by noting zanzinger's young age dylan is implying that his wealth is inherited rather than earned the fact that it's a tobacco farm is significant as well tobacco was one of the most important crops in the slave economy the wealth and status that zanzinger carry are legacies of slavery and systemic racism in america and they play clearly into the events of the song dylan describes zanzinger's reaction as shrugging and swearing by virtue of his wealth zanzinger doesn't need to face the fact that he's responsible for the death of an innocent woman the swearing description of zanzinger is pulled directly from the new york times reporting the incident it drives home the callousness of the man and the fact that it was easy for him to get violent towards carol because he viewed her as lesser the final line of the verse explores america's bail system a structure that's designed to benefit the rich and profit off of arrests even today there are thousands of poor americans who sit completely innocent in jail because they haven't been able to afford their bail this verse serves as a criticism of william zanzinger's character but it's not simply condemning zanzinger instead dylan is using zanzinger as a symbol he is what the benefactor of a broken justice system looks like when your criminal system is built to benefit the rich and harm the poor a rich man can murder a poor woman and walk away with a mild six-month sentence once we've seen the life and privilege of the wealthy and zinger we turn to his victim hattie carroll to parallel the previous verse dylan introduces hattie carroll through her job and her age it's important to note that while race is undeniably a factor in this story given that in real life zanzinger dropped racial slurs at carol neither hattie carroll nor william zanzinger's race are mentioned once in dylan's story instead dylan focuses on the fallout of that fact zanzinger's privilege as shown through the criminal justice system and hattie carroll's oppression as shown through her day-to-day life in some of the strongest songwriting of the entire piece dylan uses the form of the song to reflect the content form and content are two different avenues through which you can look at art form is the way that a piece is composed the techniques used to create it and content is the story that a piece is telling the message that it's sending in this case the content is showing how simple and repetitive carol's work life is clearing one table after another but dylan uses the form of the song to drive home this monotony the lyrics themselves are repetitive when he talks about the table more than just that dylan's emphasis on the table shows how the rich view hattie carol they view her not in terms of her humanity but in terms of her relationship to the table this is a reality that anyone who has ever worked a service industry job is more than familiar with all too often the wealthy only care about the working class so far as it benefits them after his repetition of table dylan shows this by explicitly saying carol is on a whole other level once we've learned of carol's life we get to her death at the end of the verse dylan's internal rhyme here creates momentum imitating the cane swinging through the air toward the end of the verse the cane takes on a more symbolic meaning it's not just zanzinger's cane it is the violence that is doomed to destroy all that is gentle then the verse ends on a reiteration of hattie carroll's innocence in the true story all that hatty carroll did was tell zantzinger to wait a moment for his drink for that she was harassed called slurs and ultimately lost her life dylan's final verse makes incredible use of irony irony can mean a lot of things in a literary sense but in this case it's when the surface level of a text is undercut by a shared understanding of a deeper meaning in this case dylan opens the final verse with elaborate descriptions of how just and equal the courts are the use of level here calls back to the previous verse where carol is said to be on a different level than zanzinger dylan goes at length to describe the theater around equality in the american justice system then he brings things round to zanzinger once again characterizing zanzinger's callous and careless murder in the final lines of the verse we get the punchline the moral lesson of the parable when zanzinger is handed a mild jail sentence of six months while dylan never explicitly says that this sentence is short it's put in sharp contrast with how he has described the murder throughout the song and so at the end of the verse we're left with a clear image of a broken justice system that allows the wealthy and powerful to abuse the lower classes indiscriminately through telling the story of hattie carroll dylan has shown a light on what he views as a corrupt and unjust system the verses of the lonesome death of hattie carroll are brilliant songwriting but they're also fairly straightforward the chorus on the other hand has been a topic of debate among dylan fans ever since the song was released part of this is owing to the suspect grammar the turn of phrase philosophize disgrace in particular is grammatically ambiguous but dylan's music isn't about grammar it's about aesthetics and poetics and this ambiguity encourages the listener to do a deeper reading of the chorus the first three choruses are nearly identical in my mind they seem to be calling out those who would use hattie carroll's death as a tool a cog in a greater political platform those who philosophize about the wider implications of carol's death are losing the fact of her humanity in a sense by viewing carol as nothing more than proof of an unjust system they are doing what so many people in hattie carroll's life did viewing her simply as a means to an end not as a complex human life that was prematurely snuffed out bob dylan tells these would-be philosophers to take the rag away from their face and hold off on their tears he doesn't want them to get caught up in the politics of the moment and forget the human tragedy at the center at first glance it seems like there's a level of hypocrisy here seeing as that's exactly what dylan is doing throughout the entire song but dylan is the master of the turn it's not uncommon for a seemingly incongruous dylan song to be tied together in the final moments in the case of the lonesome death of hattie carroll dylan does this by shifting two lines in the final chorus and ending with now is the time for your tears in this last line dylan admits that once the justice system has failed it is time to weep over the ills of society because in the end while there was a human story at the core of hattie carroll and the snuffing out of her life is a tragedy it's a tragedy that is created by and thus necessarily linked to the broader political systems i don't think by any means this is the only possible reading of the chorus but it's one that's cogent to me especially in the world that we're living in today by now you can probably see why i chose to analyze this dylan song in particular i think that the lonesome death of hattie carroll has a lot of relevance to the current political moment in the united states but i also think that on its own it shows the brilliance of bob dylan as a songwriter i'm hoping that this close reading helped you better understand what dylan does to make his song so unique and so powerful in my mind the lonesome death of hattie carroll remains one of the best songs in dylan's entire uber but it's honestly just one of dozens if you like this format it's something that i'd really be open to trying again so let me know in the comments if there's any dylan songs in particular that you think i should do this with and thanks for going along with this it's really fun for me to experiment and i hope this video helped teach you something new youtube's copyright system makes it very difficult to talk about music on their platform it's completely skewed against creators to the point where thousands of dollars of my ad revenue each month go to record labels that's part of the reason why myself and a number of other creators started nebula a streaming service where we can create an experiment free from the bounds of youtube the kind folks at curiositystream saw what we were doing and wanted to 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Channel: Polyphonic

Views: 69,340

Rating: 4.963717 out of 5

Keywords: polyphonic, music, video essay, bob dylan, folk, hattie carroll, civil rights, protest

Id: bcI4iGnOVyc

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/jeefberky_69]

they did a great job w the other songs so it’s exciting that they’re doing an analysis of one of my favs of his!