Garfunkel once said the song is about "the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly intentionally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other."

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 Simon and Garfunkel classic, “The Sound of Silence,” criticizes silence that perpetuates oppression. Living amid familiar darkness, people struggle to hear others screaming for recognition. Social movements, some of which have used this song, have slowly changed the faces of oppression.