Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released"

The song “I Shall Be Released” by Bob Dylan has been covered by many, many artists over the years with my personal favourite being by Nina Simone. The song itself is a great testament to life and death in which Bob Dylan explores the point of imprisonment and the way in which someone’s own reflection can be seen in a place which is without any mirrors. Now, what we talk about in the posts of “Dylan in a day” is not the critical analysis behind the songs but instead what we think the songs might be about. I have read way too many books on Bob Dylan’s songs to start giving a citation for everyone I use, so instead I want to talk to you about what I take from the song myself. “I Shall Be Released” has to be one of my favourite songs by Bob Dylan and it actually appears in two different main forms: one being on “The Greatest Hits” album along with “Watching the River Flow” and the other on the “Raw” or “Complete” version of “The Basement Tapes”. By general consensus, the latter seems to be the one that is more liked of the two.

I believe that this song is about the moments it takes someone to die. The “released” aspect to me always seems to mean death though the song itself may be about something entirely different. There are various aspects of the song that seem to hint at the fact that it is about death and dying from the line “I see my light come shining from the west down to the east”. In which the ‘light’ seems to act in the opposite way to the sun - stating possibly that the sun is setting on this person’s life as another light ‘comes shining’ in order to welcome them somewhere else. It is not unlike Dylan to use religious connotations relating to life and death in his songs. As far back as “When the Ship Comes In” and “With God on Our Side”, we can see that this is just not unusual for him to do. But, at this stage in his career, he had definitely moved away from such lyricism that was both abruptly cautious of its depiction of religion whilst also paving the way towards mythical songs which came about in the strange beliefs of gypsies on the album “Desire” and later on in “Street-Legal” thus, turning to his “Gospel” albums from 1979 through to 1981.

In the song “I Shall Be Released”, there is also a mention of there being “any day now” until the subject shall be released. This also connotes dying since the subject is realising within themselves that this is not planned. Death is one of the things that none of us can plan for and so, “any day now” is a fitting term for something that is on the way but we do not know particularly when or how. The narrator is very clear about this in the song.

The opening lines of the song also connote death since every man “needs protection” but then again every man “must fall”. To be able to see one’s own reflection inside a wall then could mean that someone is seeing their life flash before their eyes in the style of seeing their own reflection. To “fall” could then mean to start the path towards death and then, in this same moment, the narrator begins to see their own reflection and so, they are on the path towards death. The one thing I do not understand is why the narrator is still talking in days when the process of death has clearly already begun. My theory is that the days are being observed through the reflection as quick flashes of time, distorting the regular feeling of how fast or slow time is actually going.

The song itself is wonderful and the lyrics, though simple for a Bob Dylan song, are often considered to be among some of his most enigmatic. Again nobody has really figured out what the song really means, but if we keep having our own theories about it, maybe we can keep this song alive for a little bit long. It is an amazing song after all.