While it shares a sense of prevailing entropy with the previous song on the album , " Gates of Eden " , the critique in " It 's Alright , Ma ( I 'm Only Bleeding ) " is more direct and less allusive . Author Michael Gray has commented that although the vitriol Dylan unleashes towards his targets is similar to his earlier political protest songs , " It 's Alright , Ma ( I 'm Only Bleeding ) " is a transitional song in that it does not express optimism in the possibility of political solutions . Instead , Dylan sings in a new prophetic voice that would become his trademark . However , with the political pessimism comes a more poetic vision than in his earlier protest songs , along with a more complex figurative language . Howard Sounes notes that the song features some of Dylan 's most memorable images . The opening lines begin the song 's torrent of apocalyptic images : Critic Andy Gill links the opening line of the song to the title of Arthur Koestler 's bleak novel '' Darkness at Noon '' , set in the Great Stalinist purge of 1938 in Soviet Russia . For Gill , Dylan is suggesting that the human spirit can be cast into darkness by the dead hand of communism as well as by American capitalism
Great Stalinist purge
Great Purge
It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)