Analysis Of The Year Of Silence By Kevin Brockmeier

Rosalia Parrado

Ms. D

LIT 2010.012

15 September 2016

P1 rough draft – Brockmeier

Silent night “The Year of Silence” by Kevin Brockmeier, is an extremely interesting story that captures the significance of what we value in life. It tells the story about an unnamed city that begins to fall inexplicably silent. The random waves of silence were extremely short, but since they were on such an enormous scale-traffic stopping, the wind silencing, etc. People really didn’t know how to react. Some people were so affected by the silence, they completely changed their way of life but in over time, the majority of the residents realize the silence has brought about a new sense of meaning to their lives and a sense of peace falls over the city. In

In all reality, humans in our world today live in a society where all technology is noisy, loud, and distracting. Most people cannot go a day with out listening to music, watching loud scary movies, or having a loud conversation on the phone with out having other people ease dropping on their conversation. The author describes sound and technology in paragraph nine by simply stating how “general aesthetic texture of the city were simply banned outright: canned music, church bells, fire works, and ringtones” (27). The community that hears all of these noises and sounds seems to think it is like an assault against the silence. They do not know from what is normal to what is not. They seem to be happy and live in a world where it is okay to not have sound and when there is, they hope it doesn’t come back again or they would try to get rid of it. Also in paragraph nine, they took care of certain things such as “sealing the electrical generators behind thick layers of concrete by placing the air conditioning equipment in nonresonant chambers” (26). By creating this silent technology, people can go freely to where ever they would like with out having any problems with any encounter with

In paragraph 7, the author wrote “Truth was that we enjoyed the silence, and more than that, we greed for it” (24). The people from the community would go out looking for silence even if they had to look over the noise that was happening. We look at silence in so many different ways. But, silence is not always a bad thing. It can help your inner self and also helps the way you think and the way you see things. Also in that paragraph, the author talks about how the people from the community would poised in the doorways of their homes in the morning, or they would sit at the edge of their car seat when driving to work, trying to hear something faint beneath the clatter of sirens and engines. They would experience an episode of silence almost every day or so. A lot of human beings today are easily distracted and prefer silence, but can’t go more than a few months with out needing to clear their head in the all-consuming noise of a big