The album “The freewheeling’ Bob Dylan” By Bob Dylan has many songs that protest the Vietnam War. Some examples of this are “Blowin in the wind,” “Masters of War,” and “Talkin World War III Blues.” Overall the album seems to have a good amount of poetic devices and a strong message behind it. The album was produced in may 1963 by Columbia Records. It was the second album that Dylan released and a great hit success. The first song on the album “Blowin in the wind” was a hit success and showed up on many “top songs of all time” lists. All of the songs on the album where Dylan’s originals except “Corrina, Corrina” and “Honey just allow me one more chance.” The songs on the album have now become known mostly as protest music. Overall Bob Dylan does a good job portraying the message that he is trying to show about the war.

The first example of Dylan’s strong anti-war beliefs is cleverly disguised in the song “Blowin in the wind.” Throughout this song there are many allusions to the Vietnam War. “Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have/Before he can hear people cry?/Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?” In this line you can see the examples. Dylan is asking about how many people it will take to die before people finally realize that war isn’t the answer. This is just one of the songs in what I would call Dylan’s protest album. Another example is Dylan’s alliteration rich song “Masters of War.” Throughout this entire song there can be seen many examples of Alliteration. The song itself, as you can tell just from the title, is another Vietnam protest song. You that build the death planes/You that build the big bombs/You that hide behind walls/You that hide behind/desks.” Here Dylan is talking about how the “Masters of War” merely sit behind there desks doing the paperwork of the war while “Pawns” are sent out to war to do all of the fighting. Dylan’s genius doesn’t stop here however, it continues on with “A Hard Rains a-gonna fall.” This song has very powerful and rich lyrics. It has many examples of irony, alliteration, metaphors, allusions, and more. “I saw ten thousand talkers whose/tongues were all broken,/I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.” This line alone has an example of an allusion, alliteration, and irony. The allusion can be seen where he says “guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.” Which may be an allusion to the war. The time the song was written highly suggests that it may be. Many of the people going off to fight the Vietnam war where young children that had just turned 18.

Overall the album is very strong in the message that it is displaying. Dylan’s genius began with this album and has continued on from this album up until this day. This is a great album overall and has many songs that later became hits. Songs such as “Blowin in the wind” took off the most. Other songs that I talked about such as “A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall.” is packed with poetic devices. Dylan is a genius and will be considered to be so until the day he dies, and even after that. He has impacted the music industry in many ways and will continue to do so.