Throughout the story, one cannot help but feel the pain inflicted by the silence between Danny and his father. I find myself wanting to resent Danny’s father for his silence; however, as I am reading I hold out hope that the silence serves some purpose (or at least a perceived purpose).
In Danny’s response to one of Reuven’s pernicious remarks regarding the subject, I was left captivated:
You can listen to silence, Reuven. I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it…. You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn’t always talk. Sometimes–sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to. (pg 267)
anothervapor 