In 1964, the American music duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel released a song titled The Sound of Silence. Garfunkel, one half of the duo and co-writer of the famous song, summed up the meaning of this song by stating, “this is a song about the inability of people to communicate with each other” (Patton, 2023).

The speaker's tone can therefore be described as solemn and disappointed. From the fact that only darkness will listen to his message to the people's ultimate rejection, it is clear that he is saddened by the narrowness of their lives and that they are unable to look for something deeper.

Garfunkel, introducing the song at a live performance (with Simon) in Haarlem (Netherlands), in June 1966, summed up the song's meaning as "the inability of people to communicate with each other, and not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so that what you see around you is people who are unable to ...

Tenement halls are basically another way to say apartment buildings, places where people live. So, whatever this prophet wants to warn us of, the warning is written on subway walls, tenement halls, and finally it says, they're also: And whispered in the sounds of silence.