Don't Think Twice It's Alright

Being a pianist, most of the music that I listen to doesn't have words. But, for as long as I can remember, Bob Dylan has always been playing in my house. An incredible artist, many of his songs share similar aspects of the multi-dimensional poetry that we analyze in class, so I thought it would be fun to pick one of my favorites, "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." 


In the literal sense, the poem is about Bob Dylan leaving the girl he is in love with because she won't commit to the relationship. Dylan begins by repeating the phrase, "Well it ain't no use" with various phrases to show that she wouldn't take what he wanted to give her, and really only wanted what he couldn't give her. In a sad tone, he states, "And it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe/ The light I never knowed/ An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe/ I'm on the dark side of the road/ But I wish there was somethin' you would do or say/ To try and make me change my mind and stay/ We never did too much talkin' anyway/ But don't think twice, it's all right." The listener can see from this that Dylan wanted and tried to gain a connection with this woman, but there's no use because she won't try to make things right. Turning on your light could refer to loving him or pretending to love him so he would stay. As a result, there isn't any use in her trying to make him stay, because their feelings about each other in the relationship will always be imbalanced. 

The last verse sums up his final attitude of the woman pretty well. He says, "So long, honey babe/ Where I'm bound, I can't tell/ Goodbye's too good a word, babe/ So I'll just say fare thee well/ I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind/ You coulda done better but I don't mind/ You just kinda wasted my precious time/ But don't think twice, it's all right." It is pretty evident that Dylan is bitter about the situation. Even though he loves her, he wants her to know that she screwed up what could have been a great thing. The phrase "Goodbye's too good a word, babe" is harsh! Because there she has no truly good intentions, he only says, "fare thee well". If you look at the phrase "fare thee well," one sees that it sounds like "fairly well". I think that line is pure genius. It sums up what the two people had- something that was just alright. 

However, his situation with the relationship just being "alright" can easily be flipped into a metaphor for life and circumstances like these. While the end of the song makes it seem as though he hates the girl, I also see it as, "don't worry about it, everything is gonna be ok." I think Dylan does an amazing job of communicating two opposite messages in the song while still keeping the general theme focused. It leaves the work open for interpretation.