“Blowin’ in the Wind”

“Blowin’ in the Wind” is invoked as a would-be theme song for an imagined television crusade by Gardener and Bobbi. The joke punctures the appeal of turning their extraordinary discoveries into weapons, setting the song’s familiar promise of an answer against the unresolved violence they imagine confronting.

The imagined television theme

Gardener considers whether the power associated with Bobbi’s inventions could produce weapons that actually harm people, rather than merely imitate the effects of science-fiction devices. His thoughts move from a possible stun gun or disintegrator to the prospect of adapting existing inventions for lethal use. The idea is frightening partly because it has begun to attract him: he imagines himself and Bobbi striking back at people he sees as deserving it.

The imagined song arrives as a sarcastic voice in Gardener’s thoughts, picturing the pair as television crime-fighters patrolling the planet in a flying saucer. Its proposed sing-along, “The aaanswer, my friend, is blooowin’ in the wind...,” turns the song into a comic slogan for a fantasy of simple, visible solutions to violence. The line does not offer an answer; it makes the prospect of a weapons-wielding duo look like entertainment.

A refrain that challenges the fantasy

Gardener rejects the joke as disgusting, but the voice answering him insists that his own argument is dangerous. It recalls his fear after a state trooper found a pistol in his pack—a weapon Gardener could not remember putting there—and treats his current enthusiasm as the same danger on a larger scale. That memory makes the imagined refrain more than a gag: it marks how readily fear and anger can recast violence as righteous intervention.

The song’s answer is thus conspicuously absent. Gardener invokes the possibility of stopping bombings, shootings, and the deaths of children, while the imagined television jingle reduces that grave question to a catchy performance. The contrast leaves the moral problem unresolved and turns the refrain into a taunt against the easy certainty of believing that greater force will settle it.

Narrative function

The expression enters as imagined, self-mocking commentary rather than as a song performed in the scene. Its exaggerated television pitch lets the narrative expose the seduction in Gardener’s reasoning without treating his violent impulse as uncomplicated heroism. The refrain’s familiar search for an answer collides with the scene’s warning: a person frightened by a weapon’s presence can still become attracted to wielding greater power.