Rhetoric and Style in Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall"

There are a lot of rhetoric appeals that are used throughout Bob Dylan's 1960s song "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall". Pathos can be shown as Dylan expresses "I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children", providing imager of little children with weapons of war. This is shown in order to scare the general public by exposing the fact that it is the old who wage war but instead the young who die. Ethos is also strongly used in this song. Dylan sings of how he "met one man who was wounded in love" and "met another man who was wounded in hatred." He has personally been influenced by these people that are full of emotions such as love and hatred and how they are both capable of fueling violence. A stretch in ethos could be seen as Dylan makes a biblical reference to the number 6 by stating, "I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways." In the bible, 6 represents badness and evil. Dylan uses the number six to describe a "crooked highway". This signifies how the country has a path it must take but in order to take this path they may have to do things that are not very morally right. The badness is describing all of the immoral things which will take place. Logos can also be seen in this song. Dylan recalls how he's "been out in front of a dozen dead oceans" and he's "been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard." The graveyard quote has previously been used in another analysis of mine but not for logos. Here both quotes can be tied to logos as Dylan juxtaposes the imagery of death along with the numbers he uses in order to try and explain the multitude of death that has occurred due to war. Logos can also be found as Dylan "heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'." The general public has many small issues conveyed in their whispers, but these issues are simply ignored because nobody is listening. There are a lot of different style aspects in this song as well. The song starts off in past tense with Dylan describing all of the negative things that have happened in the country's history. However his last verse switches to present and future tense starting when he states "I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'." All of the problems that he mentioned throughout the song Dylan believes are still going to exist because nothing is getting done.


Sources: http://listverse.com/2012/09/20/top-10-significant-numbers-in-biblical-numerology/
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/ahardrainsagonnafall.html