Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Now to the song itself. It begins thus:“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief.“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.”Who has not reacted to life at some point or other with this same desperatecry, which the joker here wails to the thief? This opening immediatelydraws our attention to the frequently felt exasperation we have all knownand experienced whenever we have felt trapped by the circumstances of ourlives. But Dylan, the artist, by not stating explicitly who these two are, this“joker” and this “thief,” subtly invites his audience inward to ponder overtheir identities. And, until we come to identify these two, the full meaningof this song and this dialogue necessarily remain hidden on the far side ofa riddle.The joker’s lament, continuing in the next two lines, suggests thebasic injustice inherent in the joker’s situation:“Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,None of them along the line knows what any of it is worth.”We are all aware that we are alive here on this earth and that theburdens put on us by the business world and by the practical demands oflife are using up this time of our time of living, repeatedly disrupting ourequilibrium. And yet, none of the agents of those forces seems to have a clueabout what any of it is worth. As this dialogue continues in the next stanza,the thief responds with an acknowledgment of the validity of the joker’sobservation. But he adds, by way of a challenge, the cautionary reminderthat they, the joker and the thief, have now moved beyond the point of takinglife as a joke. This gentle reminder is a first indication of the intimatenature of this dialogue. The thief, by making it plain that time is runningout for them, intensifies the urgency of their conversation:“No reason to get excited,” the thief he kindly spoke.“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”Either you feel that life is but a joke or you do not, the thief seems tosuggest. If you are no longer satisfied with the notion that life is but a joke,239