Who sweeps up on "Desolation Row"?

Cinderella sweeps up on Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row.” She appears in the song’s surreal second verse, alongside figures such as Romeo and Bette Davis, in a chaotic scene that ends after ambulances leave.

“Desolation Row” was written and recorded by Dylan for his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. Running for roughly 11 minutes, it is the album’s closing track and one of Dylan’s most ambitious early compositions. Rather than telling a conventional story, the song assembles historical, biblical, literary, and fictional characters into a strange parade of urban disorder.

Cinderella is a particularly fitting figure for the song because the fairy-tale character is traditionally associated with domestic labor and sweeping ashes. Dylan turns that familiar image into part of a much darker, dreamlike landscape. Listeners sometimes confuse the answer with Bob Dylan because he wrote and performed the song, but the question asks about a character within its lyrics, making Cinderella the canonical answer.