Social Isolation In Pablo Neruda’s Ode To Salt And Paul Simon’s The Sound Of Silence

The Theme of Social Isolation in Modern Literature

Question:

Discuss about the Ode to Salt and The Sound of Silence.

The state of total or nearly total lack of connection between the society and an individual is termed as social isolation. A person when isolated from his or her community, he or she is in the state of social isolation. The modern individual is facing problems related to social isolation where individuals are suffering from aloofness, self-centeredness, lack of concrete identity (de Jong Gierveld, Van Tilburg & Dykstra, 2016). Thus, the modern individuals are socially isolated being. The purpose of this essay is to show the similarities and differences between Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Salt and Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence centralizing on a theme called social isolation. The thesis statement: The social isolation is the most common theme of the modernist writers.

The Latin American poet Pablo Neruda writes Ode to Salt.  In his poem, the poet has illustrated the story of salt in the context of the vastness of the world, thus the salt is isolated from its root in the salt mine. The salt is confined in the saltcellar now and before that, it was in the salt mine. The salt mine is the vast family of the salt and so to speak it is the birthplace of the salt. However, the salt is taken from the salt mine and used for domestic purpose. This image is similar to portray an individual’s feelings of isolation. The poet hears the solitude of the salt and the poet has been shivered by it. The poet sated, “I shivered in those solitudes / when I heard / the voice of the salt in the desert”. The poet is very respectful towards salt and expressed the long history and necessity of the salt. He wrote, “Preserver/ of the ancient / holds of ships”. The salt carries much details of the finite world, which was expressed in the last line. However, its voice is broken and it sings “a mournful song”, when it is isolated from its association. The pain of isolation is expressed in the metaphor of the individual’s pain in isolation. From another perspective, the poem is the representation of the glorification of the history of the salt. It portrays the importance of the salt in the history and the author is inspired by the salt’s history. Paul Simon’s poetry The Sound of Silence expresses the pangs of isolation in the modern world. The poem has been started with addressing the darkness, which is the old friend of the poet. The poet wants to talk with the darkness “Within the Sound of Silence” (Simon, 2016). However, the poet walks alone in some restlessness, which is the symbol of modernity. The poet might express the crowd by the restlessness. The isolation has been expressed in the lines, “ People talking without speaking / People hearing without listening / People writing songs that voices never shared / And no one dared / Disturb the Sound of Silence” (Simon, 2016).  The situation is like that where people’s interaction is meaningless, weightless and people are unable to communicate with an understanding. The songs in this world are meaningless where the oppressed voice is not shared and no one in this world is dared to write this kind of song. The silence sound of isolation is still there. Along with the representation of social isolation, the Paul Simon’s poem is the representation of the conflict between material world and the spiritual attraction, which transcends this material world. The voice in the poem plays a role of visionary who feels and makes caution about the lack of spirituality among modern people.

A Comparison of Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Salt and Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence

The theme of social isolation is present in both the poems. Ode to Salt has represented the factor of social isolation in the metaphor of salt, The Sound of Silence has portrayed it by showing the modern man’s situation where sound of silence is there, and no one is actually communicating to the others social being. The poet in his poem Ode to Salt has discussed the social isolation, though the salt shares long history with human being. The salt sung when it was in the mines, however, when it is in the solitude, the poet hears the shivering sound of the salt as isolation could make an individual sad and gloomy. In comparison to The Sound of Silence, the poet Paul Simon here has shown the social isolation in a broader way. The poet has shown the result of the social isolation among the human beings (Eajournals.org, 2017). The result is people communicates with each other without conveying the meaning, people hears to each other without understanding the meaning and the whole world is the form of isolation where true communication has broken.

Both the poets have represented their views of social isolation in their own ways. Pablo Neruda has focused on the inanimate object and given it the essence of humanity. Thus, he has used the poetic tool of personification here. The salt is get personified and the poet heard the oppressed voice of the salt. The salt here is oppressed, as it is isolated. However, any isolated being could face a number of challenges as it is torn out from its root. The salt is isolated from the mines, thus, it is facing problems related to sadness for the rootedness. The poet has used ode form here, which highlights emotion. The relationship between the salt and the world has been expressed by the one-word lines, which are preposition (Wilson, 2014). The words are structured in a way that represents the sprinkling ways of fall of the salt as if the salt is crying. The Sound of Silence is a lyric of a famous band called Simon and Garfunkel. It also represents the social isolation in its own way. The refrain in this poem establishes the silence nature of the sound that does not carry any meaning. The song carries itself the sound of the silence, which is the result of isolation.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that, as the social isolation is the pervading theme of modernity, most of the poems or songs carry the thread of this theme with them. The Pablo Neruda’s poem Ode to Salt and Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence has been analyzed in the context of social isolation and in this paper shown the reflection of isolation in the poems.

References

De Jong Gierveld, J., Van Tilburg, T., & Dykstra, P. (2016). Loneliness and social isolation.

Eajournals.org. (2017). Retrieved 11 October 2017, from https://www.eajournals.org/wp-content/uploads/Poetic-Vision-of-Pablo-Neruda.pdf

Simon, P. (2016). Lyrics 1964-2016. Simon and Schuster.

Wilson, J. (2014). A companion to Pablo Neruda: evaluating Neruda's poetry (Vol. 259). Boydell & Brewer Ltd.