Paul Simon's the Sound of Silence

For the music industry, Simon and Garfunkel, musical rock artists during this time, wrote “Sound of Silence” in 1966. This song displayed sequences of guitar, bass, and drums and quickly became a pop hit due to the increased tempo, in which Simon and Garfunkel only found out about after it was recorded.

Another technique this poem takes use of is alliteration. The alliteration used helps to express the themes importance through repletion of sound devices. A specific example of alliteration

A word that follows another word with the same consonant sounds is alliteration. Alliteration is used quite often in poetry as it helps create a certain tone or mood for a poem. Words that use alliteration are effective as it uses sound to bring focus to specific parts of a poem that are vital in making an idea or an emotion known. The use of alliteration is very clever as it is a simple trick authors use to grab a reader’s attention and help readers understand what they are trying to say. Edgar Allen Poe uses alliteration quite often in his poem “The Raven” to create a somber and ominous mood. Poe uses phrases like “weak and weary” and “doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before” to emphasize the darkness of the poem. The alliteration used also gives readers a sense that nothing good will come at the end of “The Raven” as the phrases that use alliteration are dreary and unwelcoming.

The speaker glorifies what most take for granted and shows how significant certain objects can be within their own relationship. “ The loud voice is famous to silence,/ which knew it would inherit the earth/ before anybody said so” (2-4). The speaker is able to describe the importance of the inevitability of sound in any silence. To the silence, the sound that is going to be generated within it, both signifies the silences’ end as well as its necessity. For there cannot be a clarity of the sound without first the crushing nothingness of silence. The duality of the two is a perfect example of what the speaker was trying to convey within the opening stanzas of the poem, sound and silence are vague generalities that only matter to each other in their own distinct relationship. Outside of their relationship, sound is not just noise being generated; the message it carries is what is important. However, within the confines of their relationship the fact that the noise is simply sound where there was nothing before is what makes the “loud voice” famous to the

The poem uses poetic and language devices such as metaphors, similes, connotations, assonance, repetition, and rhyme.

poem is a quotation from or reference to a book or a author or a movie. Here are some websites

In poetry, there is often the use of many words that may seem a bit strange to the average reader. These words are often more complex than what is actually meant, but are used to enhance the reading and make it more enjoyable to the reader. Other words would make the poem less smooth, and that is why such complexity arises. These words shape a type of metaphor, which is referred to as a kenning.

Colour imagery is used in the beginning of the poem as the speaker describes his

The genesis of Cormac McCarthy from a boy, into one of the most celebrated voices in Contemporary American Literature can be described as tenuous, as very little firsthand information has been volunteered. Born Charles John McCarthy Jr., to conservative Catholic parents in Providence, Rhode Island, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Cormac McCarthy has been mesmerizing audiences with a sparse and understated verbosity that has come to be recognized as “not only beautiful, but powerfully efficient as poetry,” (Maitzen). McCarthy is celebrated as a hometown hero by the people of Knoxville Tennessee and a literary icon by the most powerful woman in all of media, Oprah Winfrey. In spite of his near legendary status as an author, critics claim that he is “guilty of crimes against the English language,” claiming that

In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by

A well-written poem would help one to engage into the work with their senses. One should be able to ask themselves what the poem caused them to think, hear, see, feel, taste, and to determine what he or she learned from the poet’s words. Many people believe that because poetry is an enigmatic art, and that there is no way for sure to know the

While the setting of the novel, Barcelona, was essentially the center of the deadly Spanish Civil War, when the author Zafón was writing the story, Barcelona (along with the rest of Spain) was engaged in what was known as the “pact of silence” (Bethune 65). This “pact of silence” was fragile in every nature, with citizens and government members alike choosing to keep quiet and “not to stir the national demons.” Following several years of civil war, Spain was placed under the dictatorial rule of Francisco Franco, who remained dictator until his death in 1975 (Bethune 65). It was after Franco’s death that the “pact of silence” was put into practice as a kind of national safeguard, in some ways allowing the citizens of Spain to be able to relax again without having to constantly be reminded of the war’s deadly consequences.

poem is not merely a static, decorative creation, but that it is an act of communication between the poet and

Some argue that corrupt police officers are simply the product of a corrupt culture of the agency they work for. These officers are socially introduced to a number of informal rules when they begin employment. This process and these rules serve two main purposes. First, this process is designed to minimize the chances of external or internal controls being mobilized to address the behaviors and, secondly, to keep corrupt activities at a level that is acceptable and likely undetectable. The rule most often referred to in this connection, is the “Code of Silence.” Officers are socialized into not cooperating with investigations regarding fellow officers. Whether or not the officer participates in corrupt activities for financial gain, an officer’s adherence to the “Code of Silence” places them squarely amongst the corrupt of the profession (Price, 1972).

Throughout my poem, I use many different rhetorical devices for stylistic and emphatic purposes. The first rhetorical device I use in my poem is assonance, or the repetition of a matching vowel sound, in the words “bed”, “desk”, and “bench” in the first line of the first stanza. The soft “e” sound in all of the words adds to the rhythm and flow of the line as well as the connection between the places that I associate with myself.