Today is English Major Monday wherein I take a critical look at something that is not traditionally considered to be literature. Every Monday this month we are going to be talking about a different Bob Dylan song in honor of the birthday of a great man who fostered in me a love of Bob Dylan: Jon Smith. He would have been 64 on Saturday and even though you probably didn't know him, I promise you that the world is just a little less awesome without him in it. Jon, thank you for briefly being one of my shelters from the storm. You are greatly missed.
*Please note, this is my first attempt and it's a little rough around the edges. I am very out of practice, but I expect these to improve with time. Thanks for your patience and support!
Today's song is "Shelter From the Storm" from the album Blood on the Tracks. This is probably my favorite Dylan song, which is why it's the first one I'm going to talk about. While I was first introduced to this song on the Jerry McGuire Soundtrack when I was about 10, I have since become a fan of the live version from Fort Collins, CO recorded in 1976 despite the fact that it is missing two whole verses. What is the significance of this omission? Was it merely an issue of time or did Dylan rethink the meaning of the song and find these two verses to be unnecessary? At any rate, the live version is more rock and roll than the album version. I like my Bob Dylan on electric guitar. It makes me feel things I don't often feel: attracted to Bob Dylan.
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| Bobby, I'll give you shelter anytime. Anytime. |
As to the meaning of the song there is some confusion among fans and scholars. Some argue that the lyrics are blatantly religious - a precursor to what would later be seen as Dylan's conversion to Christianity. In this theory, the singer is none other than Christ himself, as implied in the lyrics "In a little hilltop village they gambled for my clothes". Others believe the song to be no more than a simple exploration of grace as represented by the woman described in the song. Still others have taken a much more literal interpretation and they see the song as Dylan working through his pending divorce from his then wife Sarah Dylan. This theory posits that Dylan saw his wife as the shelter whom he took for granted and subsequently lost.
But what of me? I have no great ideas about the ultimate meaning of the song - it doesn't need to have a definitive meaning. Aren't the metaphors, if read/heard as such beautiful enough on their own? For example, I don't think that the singer/speaker is actually Christ, but rather he feels like Christ in that he was betrayed by the people he was supposed to be most akin to. By that point in the song, he is feeling like a martyr. The images are stunning.
Make no mistake - Dylan is one of the great American poets of the 20th Century. If one were to read the lyrics of "Shelter from the Storm" with no knowledge that it is a song, one might think that they are reading a poem with a repetitive refrain. This technique is used to emphasize a certain point or idea in poetry as well as to lend a certain obsessive quality to a poem. This is why villanelles are particularly useful when one is trying to convey a certain amount of obsession or anxiety.
We see that the speaker in the song is afraid of the storm which is a metaphor for the trials and tribulations of life itself. He is grateful to "her" for offering him again and again "shelter" from it. This woman, through her words and actions becomes the speaker's sanctuary, causing the loss of her to be all the more devastating at the end of the song. He took her kindness for granted and found himself in the midst of the storm without any shelter - "in a foreign country" of loneliness, "hopeless and forlorn." This conjures quite a bleak image of our speaker. For the first time the speaker must face life alone.
By reading "Shelter from the Storm" as a poem, we writers can learn how repetition can be used to good effect as well as how to employ great metaphors. Whether or not Dylan was actually talking about Christ, we can use his example as a springboard for using religious imagery and metaphor in our own work. We are clever enough to realize that "She" was not sheltering the speaker from a literal storm, but a figurative one. Not only does the repetition of the image belie the speaker's anxiety, it also creates a poem where the metaphor is extended throughout. The speaker keeps returning to the idea of needing "shelter from the storm." This is how a good writer creates and sustains an extended metaphor.
So what? Why is any of this important? What do you think? Let me know in the comments!
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