Sound of Silence

Sound of Silence

Silence is very loud. Silence can say more than words can. In Iversen’s book, Full Body Burden, the silence is deafening. It screams loudly when people ask about her father and when people ask about Rocky Flats. No words are said but an answer is given. Within the town of Rocky Flats there is a code of silence and when broken the outcome is unpredictable. Throughout the book Iversen makes the silence the most important part of the conversation.

The first instance really shown in the book is the Rocky Flats site. Iversen makes silence and secrecy extremely apparent by speaking about the men who meet about the location of Rocky Flats. “No pres. No publicity. Their job is to find a site to build a secret bomb factory” (Iversen 4). The importance of this is that the factory at this point in time is a secret to everyone and there is complete silence with that. When things begin to unfold though some silence is broken and the untold stories become louder than before. The silence is finally broken for Rocky Flats when the FBI raids the factory and exposes their true intentions. This doesn’t actually end up doing much because later “Things don’t go as planned. The plant is not redesigned” (Iversen 171). This moment proves that keeping something silent may result in someone trying to expose it but, someone may try to break the silence and get silence in return.

Iversen uses more than just the obvious silence of Rocky Flats though. She uses a much more personal approach to the silence. Her Father’s alcoholism. This is a motif throughout the entire book but, when spoken about most often it’s a short sentence and the subject is changed quickly. She is also very blunt with how she speaks of it as well. Such as “For years I have prepared for my father’s death” (Iversen 163). Although, this may seem like just short break in the middle of a long ramble about chemicals, it is very intentional.