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The idea of silence plays significant role in David Henry Hwang's play "The Sound of a Voice." The theme of visitors, who turned into flowers and the lack of communication were the key-factor that caused womans death. The sound of a voice means the presence of another person. II. The symbol of shakuhachi emphasizes the nothingness of immortality in comparison to humans company.
David Henry Hwang's "The Sound of a Voice" at his most minimal play, with short lines of dialogue. The story is told in nine short scenes, and some of them have no speech at all. The title carries the main idea of the story. Sound is about what goes unsaid, and subtext.
Hanako refutes silence and yearns for control, but too scared to act in fear of loosing her youth and beauty, and this demonstration of stillness results in her death. For revealing this idea the author draws symbolism of visitors flowers and the shakuhachi themes. In this story the flowers appear several times. She tends a room filled with potted flowers, hidden behind the scrim and a vase of flowers that brings into the room in the morning. She explains that each flower was "brought in by visitors" for her to take care of. Her explanation seemed strange because the flowers were very healthy and the woman rarely had visitors.
Besides, those flowers were not characteristic for that region. Later a gentleman is sleeping and the flowers are gone from the stand, he stole on. Once the flower was taken from womans strong protection, it turned "brown, wilted, dead", but other flowers were still alive. This works as the first hint that the flowers were not that ordinary. "When I look into the flowers, I think I hear a voice-from inside-a voice beneath the petals.
A human voice. It hums with the peacefulness of one who is completely imprisoned" (p. 122). The flowers were the souls of the travelers that have visited her, that became the silent observers of her actions. We see here, that the flowers remind her of those real people, who turned into things and it gives her illusion of communication.
The flowers kept the woman ageless: "Woman is carrying the vase of flowers in front of her as she moves slowly through the cubicles upstage of the scrim. She is transformed. She is beautiful. She wears a brightly colored kimono. Man observes this scene for a long time. Then he slides the door shut" (p. 118).
But things cannot be real, not good company, and womans desire for escaping the silence of her flowers that she had drawn upon herself, even irreversible hatred for them is seen from her pleadings for the man: "The sound of a human voice-the simplest thing to find, and the hardest to hold on to. This house - my loneliness is etched into the walls. Kill me, but don't leave. Even in my death, my spirit would rest here and be comforted by your presence. The final scene, when we see the hanged woman surrounded by flower petals both, signifies her escape from the silence, in which she was left again and the souls of her visitors, that were also freed form being incorporated into the silent forms, the sort of mutual redemption.
The symbol of shakuhachi is also very important for highlighting the silence theme. Each night the man is awakened by sounds of a shakuhachi (an end-blown bamboo flute) being played. One night the music seems to be coming from all directions at once. This symbol plays very important role in this play. The sounds of shakuhachi charmed the visitors, they sounder much more beautiful then the sound of a human voice, and seduced the visitors into silence.
But the sound of a human voice meant another person being close, and here shakuhachi represents just another soulless thing, which cannot be constant companion. And with the womans immortality on the background the eternal silence in the company of just the flowers and the shakuhachi the womans choice of death is the obvious result. She's certainly influenced by Japanese stories about women witches. But her witchery abilities are not the key theme her, it just helps the author to create the symbolism. People and philosophers were searching the immortality and unearthly beauty for many centuries. But the author chows the irrelevance of all those things in comparison to human contact.
The loneliness and silence Bibliography: Kennedy, X. J. , and Gone, Dana. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. New York: Longman, 2002. Hwang, David H. The Sound of a Voice Dramatists Play Service, Incorporated, 2000.
Between Worlds: The Sound of a Voice and Pay the Chinaman. Theatre Journal, March, 1995: 14547. Review of The Sound of a Voice. People Weekly, 9 Jan. , 1984: 88. Theatre: Sound and Beauty, Two One-Act Plays. New York Times, 7 Nov. 1983.
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