Refer to the lyrics at www.bobdylan.com
Hi everybody, Kees de Graaf here, Dylan once said of this song: 'It's about my hometown... It's such a great little fable. These people who have all this opportunity and everything and they choose to be lead around by a blind horse and they squander it' The revelation of God as found in Genesis was tranmitted orally from the beginning. But as the story went on the Biblical message became more and more distorted and scrambled. But the basic message could still be recognised. There are e.g. Babylonic narratives about the creation of the world to be found in 'Enuma Elish' and the 'Gilgames'Epic and the 'Atrakis' epic speaks of the the Flood (apparently Noah's Flood.)
This song is also such an epic. The old man who lived in the moon is supposed to be God and one day He came passing by, one day He decided to get involved with this world, to make a plan of recreation and salvation for this fallen world. The little girl for whom everything is gonna be new and who will receive a diamond as big as her shoes is another way of saying that she will get into the Promised Land, there is going to be a new world - with streets of gold (Rev.21:18). If the streets are of gold, then her shoes will be like diamonds. But then something happened in paradise: the forbidden fruits. Man did not accept to live by promise and submission to the will of God only. 'Eve and Adam giving the devil reign'. All these ugly things are expressed in 'one day the little boy and the little girl were both baked in a pie'. Sin is always ugly: 'let me eat off your head so that I can really see'.
'This is the key to the kingdom' may mean:if you accept this old man from the moon with his promise of a new world you are entering the kingdom of God and everything is going to be fine. If you accept 'the key to the town' you do the opposite. The town is the image of a life in sin and destruction. Consequently you will then be lead around by a blind horse. All good gifts from the man in the moon are squandered. God will pull back then. He will go home. The river -image of life in its fulness- will go dry. There is no future in this sort of life. No fertility but futility. But then again 'there are no sins inside the gates of Eden'.
Regards
Kees de Graaf
JWH61 wrote:
This is just my interpretation, what Dylan was really saying is an educated guess at best. I think 'Under the Red Sky' is a brilliant song from an otherwise underappreciated album. It mocks fairy tales and sadly states the loss of innocence in society. When the boy and girl are baked in a pie, Dylan is symbolizing the death of innocence and the lack of hope for a bright future. "The Man in the Moon went home", is a line the clearly shows how heroes turn their backs when they are needed most. It's a grim and bleak portrait of a world gone wrong. Anyone else have their interpretations? I would love to hear from any fans of this album.
Peter Stone Brown wrote:
I think he's using fairy tales, more accurately nursery rhymes, to make a point rather than mocking them. A lot of what today are considered nursery rhymes were originally political broadsides sung in the streets, so once again Dylan is using an ancient tradition.