Simon And Garfunkel's Sound Of Silence

Watch yourself turn a TV on, as the screen lights up, a man stands with his back towards you. He’s surrounded by the darkness of the night and he begins to walk away from you, his shoulders hunched and drawn in. The street he walks down is narrow and made of cobblestone. Soon crowds appear around him, engrossed in their media, their phones, tablets, and TVs. The man is yelling towards them, but he’s ignored. This is the situation portrayed in the song “Sound of Silence.” The song, originally by Simon and Garfunkel and later covered by many bands, including Disturbed, conveys the theme of the lack of communications and the ignorance of the public to important matters, instead choosing to favor materialistic things through many examples of figurative language such as personification, metaphors or similes and paradoxes.

He refers to the growing carelessness and ignorance as a darkness creeping over the minds of the public and addresses it as a friend (Simon ln 1 and 3). Another interpretation could be that the darkness is the only thing that will listen to Simon as he feels he can’t connect with the public and discuss how he sees important topics, such as the social unrest that has surrounded the United States throughout the ages. Which at the time of the writing of the song could have been referencing the assassination of Kennedy and the opposing opinions around the