Bob Dylan Research Paper

The Nobel Prize in Literature is one of the five prizes provided in Alfred Nobel’s will, established in 1895. “One was intended for the person who, in the literary field, had produced ‘the most outstanding work in an ideal direction’”(Espmark). This prize was designed for the most distinguished literary work, that possesses great literary value, and can include older works whose significance has become recently apparent. The last requirement especially pertains to the 2016 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Bob Dylan, and the impact he had during the 1960s and 1970s that has recently been discovered. He began his musical career as a folk singer and most of his early works were focused on racists, warmongers, and other similar targets.

One of his most impactful songs, “Hurricane,” raised awareness for an African American boxer, known as Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was falsely accused of murder. Dylan held benefit concerts for Carter that reached millions of people, raising support and money for his cause. Even though Carter was not released from jail until ten years after the song launched, the song changed his life dramatically. Once he was a free man again Rubin Carter proved his transformation by: travelling the world to tell his story, becoming the Executive Director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted in 1993 until 2005, as well as a motivational speaker, and receiving two honorary doctorates of law. “He was finally free and has happily acknowledged the contribution Dylan’s consciousness-raising eight-minute ode to freedom made to his own situation. Dylan never played the song again after the last benefit show. That is freedom personified”(Castan). Bob Dylan’s legendary song brought justice to a man who had been wrongly convicted, gave that man a voice when his was taken from him, and changed his life in a way that would have not been possible

“Think it might-a been that fighter that you saw runnin' that night don't forget that you are white”(Dylan 53-54). The rhyme in these lines is aimed to stick in the listener’s mind and keep their attention on the theme of the song. Which was the fact that Carter’s trial was filled with racist bias that gave an unfair advantage to the prosecution. “Carter had been jailed in 1966 for a triple murder but the verdict was surrounded by controversy with the common belief being that the charges were racially motivated, faulty evidence had been led in the trial, and questionable eyewitness testimony had been adduced to ‘frame’ the Hurricane”(Castan). These were some of the reasons Rubin Carter’s trial was completely unjust and why he should have never been found guilty. Bob Dylan chose to help Carter because he knew it was a fight worth fighting for, showing one way Dylan was the voice of change during his time. It was this devotion for helping others and commitment to innovate society that made Dylan a prime candidate for the Nobel Prize in