Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" is an interpretation of the hypocracy among the political extremes of American society colliding in the late 1960's. The characters of the Joker and the Thief each represent one of these aspects. The Joker represents the counterculture, not taking life seriously and seeing life as just a game. The Thief embodies the corparate conservatives, taking and taking from the working and middle class. In the first two verses of the song, the characters reveal themselves to act opposite of their titles. This commentary reflects Dylan's view that the Counterculture is just as selfish and greedy, if not more so, as the conservatives. At the same time, the conservatives show that they just don't care, and see their impending doom, the Riders, as an opportunity to shed the acts and to be honest for once in their lives.
The final verse is the beginning of the reckoning. The princes, the American upper class, watches while the lessers of society, the women and barefoot servants, are passing through. The two riders, being Woe and Dispair, come to bring warning and to prepare the society as the watchtower collapses upon itself...
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1 comment:
Ok,
So I agree with what we talked about in class: the whole idea of the role reversal between the joker and the thief. But the one thing I thought about was in the last stanza, if you could call it that, the last two lines really. To me, the idea of a wildcat growling and the wind howling makes it seem that the riders approaching are something ominous and something we should fear. I see the last stanza as foreboding and dark thus kind of changing the meaning of the entire piece into something rather dark and dreary.
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