“Obedience is the highest virtue,” she said. “Questions are where evil enters.” That phrase reverberates through the architecture of ‘Songs of Silence’ like a bell tolling in a hollow tower. What happens when the very virtue we’re taught to uphold becomes the very thing that keeps us small?

In many households, rules are meant to protect. But in the Keeper’s world, rules became religion. Sugar was forbidden. Television was demonic. Outings required military-level planning. These were not boundaries; they were walls. Obedience became a muzzle, and questions were contraband.

This post explores how unquestioned obedience, especially when framed as love, becomes a subtle form of captivity—and how reclaiming your questions is often the first act of liberation.
The silent architecture of our lives. How choices made by ourselves and others build and shape our inner self, our worldview, and our sense of right and wrong. Often we long for agency in our own lives to make those choices for ourselves. Whether we consciously know it, we don’t make all the decisions because family dynamics have molded much of what we perceive for ourselves.

Look at your own upbringing. Was it shaped by an alcoholic parent? A loving family? A religion? How have those things controlled your view of others and of yourself? Did you have to hide your true self or did you feel comfortable and safe to express yourself freely no matter if your loved ones might disagree? It prompts us to consider what does it mean to build a tower, a structure of our lives, and when does that carefully constructed space, maybe meant for safety, actually become a prison?

Having someone in your life that constructs your world meticulously might pass for a prison, not just rules as guidelines, but as dense as scripture. Like they’re binding themselves invisibly within our lives. Presented as a shield, these rules foster an internal landscape of deep fear, pervasive control. The crucial insight is being able to distinguish this misguided sense of love for what it is. An erosion of self. Stifling a child’s natural sense of curiosity.

In Songs of Silence the Keeper’s influence went beyond just daily routines, it shaped how the author perceived the entire world and their place in it. It begs the question for readers, looking at our own lives, maybe how seemingly benign structures or rules, perhaps from our own upbringing, or even in current relationships unknowingly limit our capacity for, you know, genuine self expression or just independent thought. The scope is huge.

Deeply ingrained biases can be passed down in families. It’s not always through overt ways that you can easily point to. It’s subtle. The Keeper is described as “slightly melanated” herself and yet adopts this gospel of assimilation. “Her loyalty pointed ever upward towards whiteness”. She explicitly taught the author to distrust those darker and defer to those lighter. Even warning against Black and Hispanic individuals, telling her daughter to Keeper her skin out of the sun so she wouldn’t go too far. This wasn’t just simple prejudice, it was, “the echo of her erasure passed down like an unwanted heirloom”.