General Themes Like Community And Responsibility example essay topic

The Hurricane Bob Dylan's song, The Hurricane, brings to surface several of the themes covered in class this semester. The song explores general themes like community and responsibility, while also focusing on many of the sub-themes, such as justice and injustice, appearance and reality, and loyalty and abandonment. Throughout the song, the main characters constantly battle with the above themes in attempt to frame an innocent man. While the song brings up many of these themes, Dylan's characters show little consistency with the texts covered, as the texts tend to try to find reconciliation in the characters, while Dylan's characters feel no remorse in their actions. The song starts as "Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night", and the manager arrives to see the bartender in a pool of blood.

"Here comes the story of the hurricane, / The man the authorities came to blame / for somethin' that he never done", Dylan continues. The hurricane is an up-and-coming middleweight boxer by the name of Rubin Carter. The song details his wrongful imprisonment, and exposes the injustice and irresponsibility of a community in Paterson, New Jersey. The bar's manager, Patty Valentine, acts as an enabler for this irresponsibility, allowing it to continue although she knows it is most likely not the truth. "Three bodies ly in' there does Patty see / And another man named Bello moving' around mysteriously. / I didn't do it, he says, and he throws up his hands / I was only robbin' the register, I hope you understand".

When Patty calls the police, they " arrive on the scene with their red lights flash in', ... Alfred Bello had a partner and a rap for the cops. / Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out pro lin' around / He said, I saw two men running' out, they looked like middleweights, / and they jumped in a car with out-of-state plates. / And miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head".

By simply nodding her head and not speaking out to the fact that she found Bello and Dexter Bradley standing over the dead bodies, claiming they were only robbing the register, Miss Valentine denies her responsibility to the community to rightfully account for what she believes to have occurred. While this may benefit her personally, as she will keep her loyal customers, it is an injustice to the community. Instead of making the right decision, she chooses to hold her responsibility to her white customers. This is similar to Victor Frankenstein's dilemma over to whom he should hold his responsibility. While on one hand, creating another monster would hold responsibility to his unnatural creation, he has a responsibility to the community to prevent these monsters from breeding and wreaking further havoc upon the community. Fortunately, in the novel, Victor upholds his responsibility to the community, and denies the monster's demand for a partner, although he knows that this action may lead to problems in his own life.

The song continues to venture into the theme of justice and injustice. Although all the evidence supports the Hurricane's innocence, the community as a whole acts to ensure that injustice is served. "Meanwhile in another part of town / Rubin Carter and a couple of friend are driving' around/... When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road / Just like the time before and the time before that. / In Paterson, that's just the way things go. / If you " re black you might as well not show up on the street, / 'less you wanna draw the heat".

This line shows injustice, as well as the difference between appearance and reality. Although America appears to be a free country, the reality is that in these times, one may have been pulled over simply because of his race. The injustice here lies in the cops bringing Rubin in at four o'clock in the morning, and taking him up to the one bartender still living. "The wounded man looks up through his one dy in' eye / Says, what'd you bring him in here for? He ain't the guy!" Months later, after the cops get Dexter Bradley for a motel job, they remind him that he's white, and that he does not want to go back to jail. They continue to tell him, "You " ll be doin's oci ety a favor / That is brave and getting' braver.

/ We want to put his ass in stir / We want to pin this triple murder on him. / He ain't no gentleman jim". Although the living bartender negatively identified the Hurricane, he is brought to trial anyway. Just or unjust, the cops and the courts want to bring an end to the triple-homicide case, and they are willing to frame Rubin Carter in order to do so.

Given the time of the case, a black man stood little chance on the stand in a murder case. In the land of New Jersey, blacks were guilty until proven innocent, and Rubin's only "credible" witness lay six-feet-deep in the ground. "All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance / The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance. / The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums / to the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum and to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger. / No one doubted that he pulled the trigger / And though the could not produce a gun, / The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed / and the all-white jury agreed". It took the irresponsibility of a community, as a whole, to falsely try and convict Rubin Carter.

The true murderers, Patty Valentine, the cops, the judge, the District Attorney, and the all-white jury failed to uphold justice in such a seemingly lop-sided case. Indeed, in this community, "justice (and responsibility) [were] merely a game", and what appears to be a reliable justice system is, in reality, an abandonment of responsibility to "equals" in society.