Interpreting Lyrics: The Sound of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

Written and performed by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel respectively.

We'll start with verse two, because most of the first is in the present tense, so we'll be going back to it at the end. 

The restless dream refers to being in a world where everything is happy and you don’t know what is going on in real life, but it’s restless because there is a part of you that knows something is wrong and that bit just won’t shut up. The narrow street of cobblestone is narrow because there isn’t room to think, and it’s uneven ground that he’s finding hard to walk down. Nobody else is coming down this road because he’s the only person who can see this street and can fit down it, but then the light comes in, and underneath the halo of a street-lamp (a holy light), and under that light he sees a man less fortunate than him he tries to turn his collar to it so it can’t affect him as he chooses to ignore him, because nobody cares what anybody else thinks - society is about keeping yourself to yourself - so the man probably wouldn't let him help him if he tried. But then his eyes are stabbed by the flash of a neon light as he feels the pain of knowing that he’s been lied to all of his life, and it hurts to know that he’s been kept away from the truth. The flash of the neon light gives him the enlightenment and the realisation that life isn't as it seems and that it isn't all happy. If we think of the rest of the people as living in their own little silent bubbles, too afraid to talk to each other and not caring for each other’s opinions, then  when his enlightenment ‘splits the night’, it pops the bubble of silence which surrounds him and makes him see how unhappy people truly are.  We see the silence as some kind of entity which is controlling the people, stopping them from communicating and isolating them from society. Paul Simon here becomes the only man who sees past the silence and is now in control of his own life and destiny.

The ‘naked light’ refers to the same stage of realisation, but it’s clear to him now because he can see what’s going on.  The ten thousand people that he sees are the people being controlled, who are still wrapped in their own silent bubbles, talking without speaking and hearing without listening because they’re not realising the actual depth of their words, not seeing the consequences of their actions and words, not realising the misconception they have been led to believe by the silent entity. They are so controlled by the silence that they don’t think their own thoughts, cannot say what they truly believe. The fact that he says they’re 'writing songs that voices never share' shows that they are starting to think that something’s not right in their society but at the same time, part of their mind is not their own. They’re being controlled so strongly that they can’t think for themselves, its not that they’re choosing not to believe the truth, but more that they physically can’t as they’ve been brainwashed by the silence and they daren’t do anything other than what the silence has told them to do, as it says, 'and no one dared disturb the sound of silence'. If the people tried to escape, they could potentially run away from the problem but they daren’t because there would be no one to guide them as everyone thinks the same, no one could save them. The only person who believes differently to everyone else is Paul Simon.

Simon says ‘Fools, you do not know silence like a cancer grows’. He refers to cancer as a parasite, it will kill them because it gets into their system and grows bigger and bigger until it destroys everything. The silence will infect them and control them so much that it kills them slowly - they need to escape while they can. He says ‘hear my words that I might teach you and take my arms that I might reach you’ in a bid to save the people, telling them that if they listen to him and reach out to him then he can save them, pulling them away from the silence and taking them to a better place where they can be their own people. But his words fall like silent raindrops, showing that the people ignored him, as the silence has already infected them so badly that they cannot focus on what he is saying and do not believe him. The words are falling heavy as the raindrops fall a long way, into 'the wells of silence', the wells that have been created by the silent entity of thoughts of the people who tried to escape, and all of those thoughts are pooling in a well, a well which fills and never drains, but a well provides sustenance where it cannot otherwise be found, so the well is holding the wishes to escape and preserving them, building up a reserve, and the well could potentially eventually create a light. But for the time being, they will echo; hitting things but never entering them, trapped in an enclosed space, and like every echo, it has the potential to fade away into nothing.

'The people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made' refers to the idea that the silence planted, and they have relied on so much that it has become somewhat of a god to them, something for them to worship and pray to. The sign is flashing in their peripheral vision, trying to pull them away to the light, it is warning them that there is something better that is just within their reach, but it is in the places that they never look, hidden. It is saying that 'the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls,' because the things that are most important are the things that we usually walk past without thinking about, so the messages written on the walls of the subway by people that nobody pays any attention to because they aren’t behaving in a normal fashion, but the things that they aren’t noticing are written by prophets, prophets other than the silent entity who control them, prophets with the actual right idea who could save them all. But of course nobody listens to them. They're the crazy people who write on subway walls. But the words are also 'whispered in the sounds of silence', which I assume is a sign that the silent entity is breaking down. 

And so we return to the first verse. The first line, 'hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk to you again' are the only two lines in the present tense, and personally I think them to be possibly the most important ones. Basically what I believe him to be saying when he says this is that after all of the above has happened, after he's noticed it all, what he's saying in the whole first verse is that he's gone back to the darkness and confronting it and the silence about it. The whole of the rest of the song is what he's saying to the darkness. He's telling it that a vision 'softly creeping' planted a vision which 'still remains within the sound of silence', then goes on throughout the song to talk about this vision, and how he knows how they're controlling people and that he's spreading the word. This gives the last line a lot more power, which says that the words of the prophets are also being 'whispered in the sounds of silence', which I take to mean that he's planted the seed of doubt in the brains of the silent entity, and they're beginning to doubt their power. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, it is the sign of hope for humanity on the horizon.

Inferred by Rach and Dev.