Innocence disrupted: examining loss in Robert Wrigley's poem

¶ … Sound Barrier

Robert Wrigley's poem "The Sound Barrier" opens with a vivid description of the not-a-care-in-the-world, joyful attitude that characterizes childhood. It accurately depicts the carefree feelings that keep children living in the present moment, whether it be through the comfort and contentment given through dreams, daydreams, or running through a field. This expresses the innocence and naivety with which children perceive their world as a never changing solace.

However, the first stanza ends abruptly with the author stating "It was silence that shattered." This indicates a sudden event that dramatically shifted the world from as place of comfort, innocence, and peacefulness to somewhere new and unknown both internally and externally. Externally, this refers to the loud bang that accompanied the breaking of the sound barrier by an airplane, but internally it was a dramatic shift involving personal loss and change.

Throughout the poem, the author parallels a perceived sudden, dramatic change within the life of the child with the breaking of the sound barrier in 1961. The division of focus from the mother to the father between the second and third stanzas possibly suggests a split between the child's parents. The bang of the sound barrier being broken woke the child from dreams of baseball and shook the house, just as the traumatic event experienced by the child shifted his life from one of innocence and joy to one of disruption, where the only familiar comfort he had was in his world of sleep and dreams.