The song is a blues number that incorporates elements of Dylan's incomplete "Medicine Sunday", which he had recorded with members of the Band in New York in October 1965.
[4] On March 9, 1966, between 9:00 pm and midnight, four versions of "Temporary Like Achilles" were recorded by Dylan and a band at Columbia Studio A, Nashville, with Bob Johnston as producer.
[20][21] Music scholar Larry Starr described the bridge as "set off harmonically as well as lyrically, with a shift to minor chords and the singer's self-characterization as a 'poor fool'".
[9][10] Music journalist Daryl Sanders described the song as "a lover's lament built around one of the album's recurring themes: the narrator being blocked in one way or another, resulting in unfulfilled sexual longing".
[23] Shelton pondered why the bodyguard was named after Achilles, and why he is temporary; he also wrote: "A whole poem could grow from one throwaway line: 'I'm helpless, like a rich man's child.
[25] Dylan mentioned the Odyssey, and specifically Odysseus' trip to see Achilles in the underworld, in his Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech.
[9][27] Scholar of American literature Geoff Ward felt that "the layered ironies of 'Temporary Like Achilles' or 'Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again' mock both the authenticity cult of folk music, and the waftings of the incoming hippie generation, in one swoop".
"[31] The piano on the track, by Hargus "Pig" Robbins, has been praised by Margotin and Guesdon,[5] and by Gill, who calls it "beautifully evocative".
[10] Oliver Trager wrote that "Dylan's wheezing harmonica perfectly fits the song's mood of detachment and restrained disgust".