Chery Strayed’s essay is a narrative about a time when she was living with her husband and they began to hear strange noises coming from the walls. For weeks they heard these noises and eventually figured out it was coming from the wall where kittens were trapped and trying to escape. As the reader literally hears the word “hear” while reading her story, the word starts to pop out in the text and stick in the reader’s head. Coincidentally, the word “hear” is actually making the reader listen more carefully. As the reader starts to listen more carefully, they can begin to understand or analyze a deeper meaning to Strayed’s story. Through the progression and repetition of the word “hear”, Cheryl Strayed creates a symbol of the repetitive noise representing the underlying unhappiness of her marriage.

As the story begins, the reader finds out almost immediately that Strayed’s husband is no longer her husband, and after telling somewhat of a backstory of her life, the story starts with just a small recognition of a noise. “I shared an apartment with a man who was then my husband, in a building that was mostly empty” (Strayed) Strayed states. Strayed gives a backstory of her life to the reader to give the reader a better understanding of the point she is trying to make. The relevance of her husband no longer being her husband is a revelation to the reader that Strayed did not have a happy marriage, which foreshadows the upcoming main point of the essay. The emptiness of her building could also be referring to the emptiness she feels with her life. “I didn’t hear anything” (Strayed)  she says to her husband. 

The progression of the noise furthers as Strayed begins to hear it also and identifies it as coming from behind the walls. The noise coming from “behind the walls” (Strayed) is referring to how if the “noise” is the unhappiness of her marriage, the “wall” is the thing that is masking the actual problem, causing the problems never to rise to the surface. Strayed makes a bold and revealing statement by saying “It was the exact expression of the sound my insides were making every time I thought of my life and how I needed to change it and how impossible that seemed” (Strayed). Through this statement, the reader begins to see how Strayed truly feels about her life and marriage and how she relates it to the noise. The word “hear” continues to repeat, and even the structure of the story makes “hear” pop out to the reader. The structure begins to separate quotes such as, “I heard something” and “I keep hearing it,” (Strayed) By placing them on their own lines, Strayed is making these quotes containing the word “hear” more obvious and outstanding to the reader. Strayed’s husband then says, “I think we’re imagining things,” (Strayed) and Strayed agrees. The agreement that they might be imagining a noise they both hear and know is there, shows how both of them know there are problems and unhappiness in their marriage, but they would rather just pretend it’s not there. It also introduces the wall as being a symbol of a barrier between their problems under the surface, and themselves.

The sound persists and becomes so unbearable to both of them that they decide they have to do something. The sound is not stopping, and they both cannot ignore it any longer. They know they are not imagining it, and it becomes louder and louder. “I keep hearing it… the sound behind the walls”, “yeah” he said “me too”” (Strayed). Not only is the noise persisting and not getting any quieter, but neither is Strayed’s marriage. They eventually can't take it any longer and Strayed’s husband takes action and grabs a hammer to destroy the wall until the source of the noise is found. “We didn't care that we were ruining the place. We only knew that we had to get to the source of that sound” (Strayed). At this point, the noise has reached such an unbearable point that they will do anything to find out where the noise is coming from to make it stop. The repetitiveness of this noise has become a symbol of the constant reminder that they are unhappy with their marriage, and when the noise becomes too loud to deal with anymore, it symbolizes the point of their marriage coming to a climax where they cannot ignore their problems anymore. Action needs to be taken to fix these problems, and it has as Strayed’s husband destroys their closet ceiling. As Strayed’s husband is destroying this wall, which has been a symbol for what separtes them from their problems, he is essentially breaking down this symbolic barrier. This is a step being made to uncover the deep-rooted problems of their relationship and try to fix them.

Strayed ends the story with finding the literal source of the noise, and then analyzing how the story pertains to her marriage. At first, Strayed compares herself and her husband to the kittens found in the walls by saying that they were “lost” and “trapped and starving for weeks” and “how the kittens suffered for those weeks they were wandering inside the dark building with no way out” (Strayed). Just like the kittens were lost and trapped in the literal walls of her apartment, Strayed and her husband have been trapped in this marriage. They are acting like nothing is wrong, when in reality they are so unhappy. Also saying that they have been struggling in this dark place for a while and they did not know how to get out. They could not find a way to resolve their issues, so they just pushed them away. But, Strayed also argues her own point saying maybe they aren’t like the kittens at all, and “maybe the meaning was in how we heard the sound, but did nothing about it until it was so loud we had no choice” (Strayed). She explains how the kittens saved themselves, how they kept making noise until they were saved… until they got help and their problem was resolved. 

The repetitive noise from behind the walls evolves and becomes a symbol of constant unhappiness. The repetitiveness of the word “hear” repeats in the reader’s mind and by the end of the story, the reader can recognize the importance of the word. The evolution of the word goes from her husband hearing the noise, to her hearing the nose, to the noise becoming so loud the two of them cannot bear to ignore it anymore. In the end Cheryl Strayed points out how the story applies to her and her ex-husband’s marriage. The true meanings of the symbols are revealed as Strayed saw them. However, she leaves this open to interpretation giving the reader freedom to perceive the story and its meaning how they read it. This narrative is a story about kittens being trapped inside a wall, but when read and interpreted, can be a story of love and marriage and the struggles that come with it.
