Silence and Media Encounters in Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall

Abstract

Silence is enfolded with voice—the two phenomena are complementary. The presence of silence inevitably points to the presence of sound, and by extension, to the presence of meaning. Still, encountered silence can be meaningful in itself. The article explores interactions between different media (TV news, painting and black box recordings) and the corresponding silences in Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall: the silence of the main protagonist and his avoidance of news reporters; the silence of catastrophic art voiced by the use of ekphrasis; and the silence recorded by the black boxes. The rhetoric of each medium in question and its interaction with the corresponding silence are investigated to show that silence “speaks volumes” in the novel.