Alienation in Simon and Garfunkel’s Music

As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal – Karl Marx , The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 ¹

Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence has been identified as a denunciation of materialism ² as well as an examination of superficial communication ³ in an age of highly efficient technology. This article attempts to prove that alienation ⁴ is a significant theme in Simon and Garfunkel’s work and not just in this particular song. Songs such as The Boxer ,The Sound of Silence , a will be examined in a textual manner for this purpose.

Solitude and the Spring 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

The narrator appears to be talking to confusion personified :Darkness. By referring to the immaterial phenomena of darkness as his friend, he implies that he is in actuality friendless. Why is he friendless ? Because he can see beyond the mundane workaday world; into the World of Forms ⁵ to evoke Plato. He travels alone down the cold concrete jungles that become our cities as if he were a cursed spirit, trying to shore up against the cold solitude that the world has gifted him as his birthright. The solitary traveler is drawn as a fly to the flame by the neon lights which are both the object of his desire as well as the cause of his suffering .

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
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

The silence that pervades the narrative is the product of estrangement or alienation. Just as the commercial spirit has estranged the producer from the product ⁶, it also alienates human beings from each other. The homo economicus is so self-absorbed that he can no longer connect with his competitor. Just as the free man is misunderstood by the cave-dwellers ⁷, his isolation is a function of his perception.

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

Unable to differentiate between the real and unnecessary,the masses succumb to commodity worship. In replacing the divine with the material, the choice between Mammon and God has already been made. Echoing Macruse’s critique of mass-consumption society people are chained to a state of unfreedom ⁸ under the crass exhibitionism of “neon” consumerism. Yet ,the mass-consumption society with it’s marginalization of the lumpen and minorities creates for itself it’s own grave diggers. It is the non-alienated tenant-dweller and the destitute who shall revolutionize the system and not the proletariat.

The Boxer and Marginalization

How could the industrial working class, long considered by Marx to be the agents of revolutionary change be neutralised this effectively ? According to Louis Althusser and even Antonio Gramsci ⁹ these operate through control of both coercive as well as instructional institutions.

I am just a poor boy
Though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station
Running scared,
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places
Only they would know

The narrator in this song appears to be a young man who is living on the margin suffering from physical and social isolation. He’s been brought into the city by false promises (reminding us of Marx’ false consciousness ¹⁰) and tries to escape from his social reality, but his misery is insurmountable.

Asking only workman’s wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores
On Seventh Avenue
I do declare
There were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there, le le le le le le le
Then I’m laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone
Going home
Where the New York City winters

Aren’t bleeding me
Leading me
Going home

The pathetic economic situation denies him the comfort of a steady job, leaving him to fend for himself on the streets of chilly New York , reminding the reader of O Henry’s story ¹¹. Here, he reaches the epitome of his estrangement, when quenches his thirst for company by partaking of commodified sex; the very image of commodities replacing humans ¹².

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev’ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains, mmm mmm

On the surface, this seems to be the endorsement of Macruse’s Great Withdrawal thesis ¹³, with the boxer being drawn to the blood sport by either the threat of starvation (since he is a wage-slave) or due to the social pressures due to the conspicuous consumption by the elite. Yet just as Foucault talks of micro-struggles ¹⁴ against the status quo , it also possible to see this as an act of resistance. Even after the brutal treatment meted out to him in the fights he chooses to get back up and go on struggling.

While The Sound of Silence is more obtuse about the cultural critique intended, one could argue that it is The Boxer which is more revolutionary in nature. The Sound of Silence talks of the hopelessness and the relegation of revolution to The Other while The Boxer advocates an ideology of struggle against status quo through an application of willpower, thus echoing Adolf Hitler.

“The Goddess of Suffering took me in her arms and often threatening to crush me my will to struggle grew and I was triumphant.” ¹⁵

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