Relevant Background | Summary | Themes | Tones | Imagery | Sound Effects

Death of a Son
Jon Silkin [1930-1997]

Relevant Background

• Jon Silkin was born in London. He was the son of a solicitor
• Silkin attended university in London
• Jon Silkin was a poet, critic and editor
• He became a poet while working as a manual labourer 
  Then he worked as a teacher and lecturer
• He believed that writing had a moral as well as an entertaining effect
• He founded and ran the literary magazine ‘Stand’ for forty-five years
• Jon Silkin explores personal pain in an honest way

Summary

Jon Silkin wrote this poem in eleven stanzas. This poem is not like a newspaper article. It is not straightforward description. The poet didn’t make it easy for the reader to understand his message or meaning. There are different ways of making sense of this difficult poem.

Silkin wrote ‘Death of a Son’ in memory of his son who died aged one year. It seems he wrote this poem to describe the moment of his son’s death. The poem is Silkin’s way of coming to terms with the death of his one year old son.

The subtitle of the poem reveals that the poet is grieving for his mentally ill dead infant:
‘who died in a mental hospital aged one’.

In the first stanza Silkin uses the word ‘something’ three times. He is unsure what to call his son. Yet, for him as a father it is a ‘something’ that matters a lot. He uses language like this to demonstrate that his mentally ill infant was different from a normal person. He cared for his son, even though he doesn’t name him. The poet is full of emotion but he is determined to control it. His aim is to show how his son died. He isn’t directly expressing his own feelings as a father. But Silkin does reveal his grief. His son will no longer ‘come along with me’. This gentle phrase shows quietly the grief of a father who will never see his little son growing up. He will not have the joy of watching his little boy following him around.

He reveals that the death of his son was dreadful:
‘And there was no nobility in it’.
Silkin is not going to say nice things about his son’s death for the sake of it.
In the second stanza Silkin shows that his dying son was like a lifeless thing. He was like a one-year-old house, inanimate. He was totally silent, compared to other happy, singing children:
‘dumb as stone’.
Yet ‘something was there’. This phrase is important because it shows that as a father Silkin still felt connected to his silent infant son.
The nearby buildings contained the sounds of joy and of life as active children played:
‘the near buildings sang like birds and laughed’.
In the language of the poem, Silkin is also comparing other children to buildings. Active children were like buildings full of joyful sounds, unlike his son who was like a dumb stone building.
Silkin was conscious of his son’s stony silence in death. He admired the way active children mocked the silence with songs and laughter. It is as if they made a ‘pact’ or agreement with silence so that they will get out of being silent themselves.
In the third stanza, Silkin compares his son’s silence in death to the singing and laughter of all the children of the neighbourhood who refused to be silent:
‘bless silence like bread, with words’.
This is a clever image. Silken sees the joyful life of children as sacramental. It is like communion bread. When bread is blessed, it is transformed [changed] into something spiritual. Silence is blessed, as long as there is song and vitality to counteract it, to cancel it out. The silence of his son was ‘dumb’. That’s a tragic silence. But silence was blessed for those who used joyful words to counteract it or reject it: ‘forsake it’.
Silkin means that silence is the enemy of children. Healthy active children ‘forsake’ silence; they abandon silence by making a ‘pact’ with it.
What deal do children make with silence?
This is one of the difficult ideas of the poem. Silkin means that they instinctively overcome silence through joyful song and play.
In the fourth stanza, Silkin compared his dying son to a silent house ‘in mourning’. Silkin says his son looked inwards towards himself to watch the silence. It is as if his dying son stared at the silence inside himself. His son seemed to worship silence. His son was like a quiet, mournful house where everyone was silent.
Meanwhile other houses in the neighbourhood were like singing birds with their active and noisy children. Silkin really seemed to admire the noisy joy of the active children. The houses seemed to ring with echoes of their happy play:
‘The other houses like birds sang around him’.
In the fifth stanza, Silkin describes the moments before death while his son breathed silently. In this unusual description, Silkin suggests his son was between the stillness of death and the movement of living:
‘And the breathing silence neither
Moved nor was still’.
In the sixth stanza Silkin repeats the comparison of his son to stone. He was touched by the fact that his son though human was as inert [lifeless] as the bricks of the house, with ‘flesh of stone’.
In the seventh stanza Silkin emphasises the joyful lives that other children lived, in contrast to his son. He shows a touch of black humour by comparing them to ‘birds singing crazy’. After all, his dying son was mentally ill. The silence of his son emphasises the noisy joy of normal healthy children. The difference between his silent son and the active children became magnified as he approached death.
In the eighth stanza Silkin notices that his son suddenly changed. The dying infant had a spiritual look about him. His son looked as if he was having a religious vision before death:
‘this was something religious in his silence’.
In the ninth stanza, Silkin surprises us by saying that this change in his son was caused by the fact that he was going to die:
‘Was something to do with death’.
A shine came into his infant son’s eyes before death.
In the tenth stanza, Silkin reveals that his son looked out at the universe, ‘as if he could speak’:
‘The look turned to the outer place and stopped’.
The ‘dumb’, dying son changed the direction of his gaze for the first time.
The living sounds of ordinary children seemed very loud to the poet at this point:
‘shrilling around him’.
The poet has altered his language. The word ‘sang’ of stanza two has changed to ‘shrilling’. This is very dramatic. The noise seems to reach a climax, like background music. It seems high-pitched, somewhat like when the score in a film becomes loud and dramatic to signal a climax. ‘Shrilling’ is a climax in the surrounding noise in contrast to the silence of death. The poet’s heightened awareness of the noise from the neighbourhood shows us his pain at his son’s death. His awareness of ‘shrilling noise’ of other children makes us more aware of his grief as the bond with his son is broken.
In the final stanza, Silkin suggests his infant son’s inner suffering with the phrase ‘red as a wound’. Silkin felt his son was apologising to him. He is very touched and feels loved at this moment. It is very poignant for Silkin that his son shed a tear for him at the end. It is as if the son tries to apologise to his father. He is sorry for the ordeal he made his father go through:
‘as if he could be sorry for this’.
This is a very spiritual moment in the poem. It is exquisitely touching. The infant both fulfilled and broke his father’s heart by shedding two tears as he died:
‘And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
and he died’.
The poet couldn’t voice his emotions any further in words. He ended on a forlorn note, deliberately using only a few words to report the death of his son. The abrupt ending says a lot more than its words.

Themes

The poet tries to deal with the his emotions on the death of a son
‘Something has ceased to come along with me.
Something like a person’.
In this quote, the poet reveals his bond with a son who cannot communicate.

The poet tries to describe what a mentally ill infant is like:
‘dumb as stone’.

The poet portrays the inability of his mentally ill infant to communicate:
‘But he neither sang nor laughed’.

The poet describes the stages of his son’s death:
‘there was no nobility in it…
Kept the eye turned in to watch the silence …
A house of stones and blood in breathing silence
Something religious in his silence,
something to do with death.
The silence rose and became still.
The look turned to the outer place and stopped,
He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
and he died’.

The poet portrays his own various personality traits:
He is numb with emotional pain:
‘Something has ceased to come along with me’.

He is spiritual:
‘He did not bless silence
Like bread, with words.’
‘Something religious in his silence’.

The poet keeps control over his emotions:
‘And there was no nobility in it’.

He is broad minded enough to admire the noisy joy of the active children:
‘The other houses like birds sang around him’.

He is very alert:
As if he could be sorry for this’.

He is not sentimental, but blunt and truthful:
‘and he died’.

Tones

Sometimes the tone seems neutral and restrained:
‘And there was no nobility in it’.

Sometimes the tone is distressed but he hides it:
‘Something has ceased to come along with me’.

Sometimes the tone is admiring:
‘The other houses like birds sang around him’.

Sometimes there is a tone of black humour:
‘birds singing crazy.

Sometimes the tone is tender:
‘And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones’.

Sometimes the tone is direct, blunt and honest:
‘a house of flesh and blood with flesh of stone’.

The brevity of the poet reveals a tone of grief:
‘and he died’.
This line has a desolate tone.

Imagery

The central image is the house. Silkin compares his dying infant to a house. He compares other active children to houses.
The house image is a metaphor. This metaphor is a comparison image in which the stone house helps us to be aware of the nature of the unspeaking infant son.
Because the metaphor of the house is used throughout the poem, you can call it an extended metaphor.
These six quotes connect the qualities of a house to Silkin’s dying son:
‘Something was there like a one year old house,
dumb as stone…
While the near buildings sang like birds and laughed…
like a house in mourning…
I have seen stones: I have seen brick
But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone but a house of flesh and blood with flesh of stone and bricks for blood. A house of stones and blood …
he was a house drawn into silence…
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones.’

[If you wish to, you can refer to the comparison of the mentally ill son to a house as an analogy. An analogy is a parallel image. The ‘house’ in this poem is an image which forms an analogy for the poet’s view of his infant. Without this analogy or comparison, we would know a lot less about Silkin’s attitude to the life and death of his son. The comparison or analogy is an image for the poet’s pain as well as for his silent son. The house analogy is a dignified way of coping with Silkin’s difficult situation as father of a dying infant.]

The poet uses a simile to portray the joy of other children:
‘Sang like birds and laughed’.

The poet uses a simile to portray the final sorrow of his child at death:
‘two great tears rolled, like stone’.

Sound effects

Alliteration [the repetition of first letters]:
‘no nobility’.
The repetition of the ‘n’ sound expresses the numb feeling of the father.

Assonance [repetition of vowels]:
Note the six distinctive ‘i’ sounds of the line:
‘Something shining in his quiet’.
Sound reinforces meaning by sharpening the reader’s focus on the word ‘shining’. Sibilance also adds to this language effect.

Note the ‘i’ sound repeated in this phrase:
‘birds still shrilling’.
The ‘i’ sound emphasises the impact of the children’s din around the silence of the dying infant.

Sibilance [repetition of ‘s’ sounds]:
‘birds still shrilling’.
The repeated ‘s’ sound emphasises the expression and adds to the effect of the assonance.
'‘Something shining in his quiet’.

Rhyming
'Death of a Son' is a lyric with no rhyming pattern. A few lines rhyme, but there is no overall rhyme scheme.

Internal Rhyme [a word or sound rhyming within a line]
Note the phrase repeated in this line:
‘I have seen stones: I have seen brick’.
The internal rhyme emphasises the knowledge of the poet.

Cross Rhyme [a word or sound rhyming across two or more lines]:
Note the repetition of ‘something’ four times in the first five lines.
Note the repetition of ‘something’ five times in the eighth and ninth stanzas:
Note the repetition of ‘silence’ ten times in the poem.
Note the way the words ‘stone’ and ‘house’ are repeated in stanza six:
‘I have seen stones: I have seen brick
But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone
But a house of flesh and blood
With flesh of stone’

Rhythm
The rhythm is something like a chant or hymn. The beat is slow, controlled and has a lot of repetition. Sometimes the lines and stanzas are self-contained. At other times, the meaning flows from line to line and runs on between the stanzas. The repetition of words like ‘something’, ‘house’ and ‘silence’ as well as phrases like ‘I have seen’ and ‘I was’ give the poem the quality of a chant.