Tough Times in the Song: Sound of Silence by by Simon and Garfunkel

Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and his dad did not have the best relationship in the beginning, but at the end of their very long journey they were inseparable. In the book Boy In the Boat by Daniel James Brown Joe did not really have a family until he made the rowing team, and until he met Joyce who would later become his wife and they would start a family. Human resilience is affected by family in both of these books.

"She could only just recognise the tune for what it had once been. Not that coarse parody, stilted and mechanical, a tin brashness, a gaudiness of noise." Unpleasant and irritating sounds and noises suggest the lady's discomfort, as if the song was

In across the Causeway Hill uses the effect of sound throughout the chapter to create a sense of splendour and Isolation.

Analysis of 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night by Simon and Garfunkel In expressive arts we are studing the topics the 60’s. We listened to the song “7 O'clock News/Silent Night” Simon and Garfunkel. In 1956, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were juniors at Forest Hills High School in New York City. They began playing together as a group called Tom and Jerry, with Simon as Jerry Landis and Garfunkel as Tom Graph, so called because he always liked to track hits on the pop charts.

Ultimately we all find ourselves in that moment when our last breath is released from our body, dieing is our final destination, but what truly determines the worth of our life is the fight and the will power each individual endures in order to continue living. In the story “Sonny’s Blues” written by Jamis Baldwin, Baldwin writes about the suffering we all face in life and how difficult it is to make it through the darkness when one can not see the light. It is the acknowledgement that one did not give up on his or herself that makes life worth living. Sonny and the Narrator's life chronicle emulates the raw uncensored reality of life. Although Sonny made horrible deleterious life decisions, it is important to acknowledge that these decisions

Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther was an astounding book. Granted, it was a bit depressing, but it was a great book because I could relate so closely to the author. The trial of a loved one going through cancer is something I can relate to. Fortunately, my story turns out a little bit better than Johnny’s did.

In the book And Still We Rise By MIles Corwin, we hear the stories of students childhood and upbringing. We also hear about their aspirations for the future but each of them seem to have extensive barriers that try to stunt their growth. Throughout the book we see how it’s not how someone is brought up that dictates who they are, but it’s that person’s perseverance that makes them who they are.

In Night by Elie Wiesel, silence is a reoccurring theme that represents many aspects of Wiesel’s struggle during the most coldblooded massacre in the history of the world. Although silence may seem unimportant, Wiesel’s remarks about this theme symbolizes far more. He believes it is silence that allows the Nazis to takeover and begin the slaughtering. Wiesel emphasizes that silence is the only appropriate response to the Holocaust because the events that took place at Auschwitz have caused language and words to seemingly have lost their meaning; the words people use to describe what happened cannot even compare to the reality of the event. Language no longer has any power to express the truth of what happened to the Jewish people during this inhumane mass execution. Wiesel uses silence to intensify dramatic effect, to suggest the indescribable, and to symbolize the loss of faith.

“The Sound of a Voice” by David Henry Hwang is a one act play telling the story of two characters, Man and Woman. These characters both live alone and isolated. Woman is rumored to be a witch, and Man is a soldier without a purpose who comes in hope of killing Woman. They both have a fear of silence and love. These unusual fears result in their fatal downfall. This play explores deep emotions, such as the fear of silence that Man and Woman share which pushes Woman to commit suicide. A fear of intimacy, felt exceptionally strong by Man, results in unfortunate timing leading to Woman’s death. Loneliness displayed by both characters is the underlying cause of the outcome. These feelings play together to contribute to Man and Woman’s tragic love.

Live your life to its fullest, if I had to mention one thing I learned from Mary Oliver 's beautiful poem, "When Death Comes", that would be it. Specifically not letting time pass you by, or letting things like anxiety or anger control your life. The comparisons to death also help with understanding the magnitude of our mortality, and the importance of not taking each and every day for granted. With many fitting and unique metaphors I found it easy to be engaged with the poem. This leads also to a lot of relevant and surprising imagery, employing a more detailed vantage point for the reader. In "When Death Comes", Mary Oliver uses persona, metaphor, and imagery to speak not only of death, but more specifically living life to its fullest before death.

The topics that we discussed this week in class are poverty and poverty alleviation. Of the three songs we listened to relating to this topic, I decided to focus on Johnny Cash’s “Sixteen Tons” for this week’s reflection. The chorus of this song sings “You load sixteen tons and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt, Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store.” This song is about the hard life of a coal miner, and how much work is required for a job that results in such small earnings. Working long hours to load the coal was a job for many people, but left them with no more money than they had the day before.

Life is full of loss and you cannot avoid experiencing it and well as sorrow. As people grow up they come to realize that the world is not as it seemed to be when they were younger. They get more independent and their perspective of life changes. They will have to realize that they are not going to live forever. In the short story The Hurt Man, written by Wendell Berry and published in 2003, we meet Mat who learns all of this.

Mabel had known there would be silence. That was the point, after all. No infants cooing or wailing. No neighbor children playfully hollering down the lane. No pad of small feet on wooden stairs worn smooth by generations, or clackety-clack of toys along the kitchen floor. All those sounds of her failure and regret would be left behind, and in their place there would be silence.4

He appears alone and isolated – he is – but when the camera pulls back, it reveals that he is on a plane filled with other passengers of all different ages. He is returning home to Los Angeles from college in the East. He appears slightly shy and uninviting; his face is blank, expressionless, lethargic, and almost zombie-like looking. [The beginning and end of the film are very similar with each other – the young couple, is surrounded by a busload of passengers, but still remain isolated and unemotional.] Benjamin stands mute to himself on the automated, moving walkway at the busy LAX airport the camera is positioned to reveal Ben's left profile while the frame height is a medium close shot allowing Ben's image to dilute in the viewers mind. In this profile shot, the character is positioned to the right third of the frame to allow sufficient space in front of Ben. This is done in order to not cluster the characters line of sight as seen by the viewer. Dustin Hoffman's character appears to be lost, confused, and in the midst of discovering his life. The soundtrack also plays an important role in this interpretation. The song "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkle establishes a feeling of sadness; it's a non digital sound that expresses a melancholy reaction, it also reinforces the theme of his emptiness and alienation from his surroundings.

The song "Gloomy Sunday" sany by Billie Holiday, originally know as the Hungarian suicide sing. Composed by an Hungarian, Reszo Seress. Gloomy Sunday of it's dark errie musical and lyrics, was a song about the war of the Great Depression. Yet a deeper meaning of its story wrote by Laszlo Javor. The story goes about a lover leaving him which lead him in pain to commited suicide. We can see in the first line of the song "Sunday Gloomy, my hours are slumberless" it tells the listener that the protagonist ofnthe lac of sleep and is going through a dark depression in his life. The sing soon followings by the lost of his/her lover, mourning with grief the protagonjst commit