The Sound of Silence analysis of the style of writing and language

Essay by Ru2s0s0i3anCollege, UndergraduateA+, February 2004

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'The Sound of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel is a song written in the 1960's about the extent to which people suppressed their true views about the Vietnam War. The poetic voice is the poet himself and it is through his vision that we are made aware of the great disappointment that he feels at the peoples inability to say what is on their minds.

The title suggests the poet's realization that there are so very few people responding to the cruelty and injustice of the war that the silence actually gains a sound. From the very first stanza of the poem, the mood of disappointment sets in when we encounter the poet communicating his thoughts toe his friend darkness, possibly because no one else wants to listen to him.

The poem consists of five stanzas of six lines each except the last one with a steady rhyme allowing the reader to continue reading easily.

With rhymes such as 'creeping-sleeping' in stanza one and 'lamp-damp' in stanza two enables the poet to bind his ideas together, creating a piece pleasant to read.

In the firs stanza the poet feels the need to communicate the contents of his vision that he dreamt once again in his dream while he was sleeping. The dream is presented to have a very disturbing effect on the poet when he starts analyzing it in his second stanza. He refers to his dreams as restless as he walks alone down narrow streets of cobblestone until a neon flash, which may be a memory of his own when he was participating in the Vietnam war distracts him. The purity of the naked light allows the writer to spot ten thousand people, who very ironically hear without listening and talk without speaking as a result of...