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The Sound of Silence

by Simon & Garfunkel

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The song "The Sound of Silence" was written by Paul Simon in the early sixties, but first published only on 19^th February 1964. It took Paul Simon about two years of writing and rewriting it until he would perform his final version.
The song is not based on, but partly influenced by the murder of J.F. Kennedy on 22^nd November 1963, where America was shocked by the violence and struck with grief, so the final draft of this song became more aggressive than he intended it to be.

First stanza

The first stanza shows that the person who speaks to us is a poet (1^st line) and that he stands outside from society, since he mentions that he does not have anyone else to talk to except the darkness, which at the same time symbolizes the loneliness. Even then he can only communicate in his dreams and visions, and his dreams, as later explained, are those of a better world where people are able to communicate not only on a basic level.
Even his vision has to "visit" him "softly creeping", so that it avoids being ward off.
It is also remarkable that every stanza ends with the phrase …the sound of silence, except for the 4^th, which reads … "the wells of silence."

Second stanza

In the second stanza it becomes finally clear that this a song about alienation and loneliness, when the singer describes how he walks through dark streets. The "restless" dreams tell us that this person does not consider dreaming as something positive, as already assumed in the last paragraph. There are many symbols for loneliness in a city, e.g. the "narrow streets". In the original version even the emphasis lies on the word "alone".
The scenery Simon sets is a very uncomfortable one, where it seems to be raining, so that the singer has to turn up his collar as a sign of defence, and so he might also defend himself from being accosted on the streets.
The "halo of a street lamp" is not able to enlighten the darkness, it probably shows and points at it even more, but then, suddenly, his eyes were "stabbed by the flash of a neon light", and we are called back to the violence that was also indicated before.
The "neon" (which will be repeated later on) stands for the glaring, flashy and shocking light, like a lightning that dazzles the spectator for a moment, and –since it "stabs" the eyes- is here compared with a knife.
This brightness of the neon light is so strong that it enables it to "split the night", which the street lamp was not able to. There are many speculations what the neon light could be, but one explanation is, that it symbolizes the flashing adverts for a bar or a motel that blink in the night, or the TV programme that flashes up on a TV screen.
Here, for the first time, the commercialism is mentioned that makes people only mind their business, so that they do not care what is happening around them. This is also a major theme in the song.

The "naked light" stands for its ability to reveal things that were hidden before, and therefore it presents to the reader or listener this situation which is so obvious for the author. It also reflects the content of the last stanza.
Simon says that although people do speak to each other, there is no serious understanding. It does not only affect a small group of people but "ten thousand".
Again, he sees himself as an outsider as he does not consider himself as a part of those people, but he is the one who is writing "songs that voices never share", probably because he writes songs that show his opinion, but that would not be successful in selling.
As he stands outside the mainstream, he is aware that the silence has become so great that no one dares disturb it.
This situation is comparable to a conversation of a few people who all fall silent at the same time and no one dares speak first, just on a bigger scale.

Fourth stanza

Here, the singer starts actively (not only with words, but with deeds) to help those people recognize what is going wrong and tries to take them by the hand and guide them, but they would not follow.
He compares silence with a cancer, and that is a very suitable description, as a cancer grows unnoticed and spreads around the body if not detected by a doctor. When a cancer has grown too large it is very hard to fight it, and it seems the same with silence. It is impossible to break silence if everyone has become used to it, therefore Simon wants to "awake" the people with his song and calls them "fools", so that they might understand, so you could say that he is the "doctor" (or sort of a "patronizer", as he knows about the disease of silence).
In the last line his disappointment that he is not understood is clearly shown ("but my word like silent raindrops fell….). In the original version one can also hear them "echoing" because of Simon’s very special pronunciation and the rhythm of the music. Here, the last phrase is changed from "the sound of silence" to "the wells of silence" since it then strengthens the echo.

Fifth stanza

The failure to communicate is the people’s own fault, Simon says, when he tells the reader that they are praying to a "self-made" neon god. Again, we have the example of neon as something negative, even destruction, whereas usually light is used as a symbol to show hope.
Again, this neon god could be a simile for the commercialism that took hold of the many people in those days and the capitalism of that time, especially since a few lines later he is talking about the sign on subway and tenement walls, which implies that Simon maybe again thought of advertisement posters and the prophets to be the top managers of big companies. However, his greatest aim is to show that they worship nothing, that their neon god is not the light at all, that he is hollow, without meaning and of their own making.

In general

"This song uses the imaginary of light and darkness to show how ignorance and apathy destroy people’s ability to communicate even on a simple level. The light which should symbolize truth and enlightenment is destructive, painful force with metaphors of stabbing, flashing- even worshipping a false neon god." (Simon and Garfunkel- The Definitive Biography by Victoria Kingston, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1996)

This is the summary of the main themes of "Sound of Silence": Light, which is also often linked with truth, is used as a very strong weapon, e.g. like a knife. Someone said it is also about the insularity of a big city for somebody who has just recently moved there and does not find comfort there. People become immunised against each other and everything it very impersonal and foreign, they are unable to convey their feelings to each other and do not feel the need to do so.
It is definitely the classic hymn of alienation in the sixties and it was the first No.1 hit by Simon and Garfunkel, so that it also influenced all the other songs still to come and alienation remained a big them for them as songwriters. Their songs were especially liked by lonely, introverted teenagers since they exactly expressed their feelings.
Funnily enough, this song was the most requested one in all of Simon & Garfunkel’s concerts: thousands of people formed a crowd to hear a song about loneliness!

© T.L. (2004)