Silence Themes
Language and Communication
We get hit on the head with "silence" as a theme as soon as we read the title, but the poem itself gives us a bit more than promised. The poem constantly negotiates between silence and speech: who...
Power
Whether we like it or not, fathers are authority figures. They set the rules (and can ground us if we don't follow them…), but they can also teach us a lot of things. In "Silence," the speaker's...
Isolation
You know how some people are really nice, but you just know that you'll never stay up all night with them, eating pizza and gossip about ex-boyfriends/girlfriends? Between the speaker, her father,...
Tradition and Customs
Most of the father's speech reads like a classic case of a parent trying to teach his child some manners. We certainly get an idea of what his values are and what he views as "superior" behavior. O...