Dylan Essay

Dylan Essay

The War Machine

Many Protest songs created during the Sixties often dealt with some aspect of the Vietnam War, whether themes dealt with ideas such as loss of life, brutality of war, wars based on political agendas and hypocritical governments, or many other aspects related to war, and its negative impact on society. Bob Dylan, a singer/songwriter most well known for his songs of protest, wrote several songs in protest of the Vietnam War. Dylan’s Song “Masters of War” is one such song of protest, but is unique in the way that the speaker of the song is not Dylan himself, but rather a young man, whose life is affected by the war first hand. This young man is likely a soldier who is fighting in a war that he does not necessarily approve of. In this songs exploration of war, the soldier is shown to believe that those creating weapons, or tools, for war, are part of a larger system, known as the military industrial complex- in which political powers finance those companies who make war tools, and as a result the political powers have a surplus of weapons creating a need for war. The young soldier is clearly angry throughout the song, which is made clear through the Lyrics that Dylan choose to execute the song. Dylan is asserting that those creators of war tools must be blamed for their part in a whole system based on financing, planning, and commissioning the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people world wide.
In the songs first stanza, Dylan, or rather the young soldier, is calling out those “Masters of War” which include people who “build all the guns”, those that “build the death planes” those that “build the big bombs” and those who “hide behind walls” as well as desks. The young soldier calls them out to tell them that he wants them to be aware that he can see through their masks. These masks are not physical ones, rather they are symbolic masks. What these masks symbolize is left to the listener of the song to decide, but it is clear that these maskes...

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