Society uses music to distract itself and ignore the world around it. Students tend to plug in headphones during class to block out the noise produced by classmates and/or the teacher, allowing them to focus only on the task at hand, their homework. Not only is it helpful to cancel out the noise in our surroundings, music also helps cancel out the noise coming from our mind. People who work in construction, arts, education, and sometimes even federal industries like the post office, use music to distract themselves from their surroundings and make time pass faster by avoiding any sense of reality. In “Blusting Music To Drown Out Reality” by Sydney J. Harris, music is expressed as a mask for society. He expresses his theory about people and their ignorance regarding music by believing that they listen to music to distract themselves, through an informal perspective. A man who hates modern music and believes that people only listen to music to ignore everything and prevent them from thinking about reality instead of listening to music to enjoy it. Harris uses metaphors and comparisons to express the importance of having a sense of reality. People listen to music for enjoyment and crave the art created from it, however, they use it to drown out everything around them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Society's use of music has definitely changed for the worse over the years. People have lost the love for music because of its art and are only interested in erasing our surroundings. Sydney J. Harris not only explains this throughout the text, but also uses metaphor to get his point across. His argument that people within society no longer listen to music for the art of it but to "drown out reality" is emphasized by the metaphor: "It is not for listening to music, but for the minds they can be calmed by the sound, so that the silence does not force them to think about themselves or experience the real world of perception and sensation” . The use of “empty in their minds” represents the void or nothingness in the mind of society today and reinforces the idea that music has become an addiction to avoid reality. The condescending tone of the text towards people who only listen to music as a distraction shows that it is disappointing and absurd that people fill with music links back to the statement “empty” to reinforce the metaphor used within the sentence. The generation in which people live today is represented in this text in a negative way, expressing that society has lost the The importance of appreciating things for what they are and have become a way to avoid problems and reality. Along with metaphor, Harris uses comparison to make his points. are understood by the reader. The comparison throughout the text emphasizes the differences and similarities between people's purpose for music and other addictions and/or distractions from reality. Music has become a popular distraction within this generation, and Harris compares it to other substances, hobbies, and objects. To strengthen the argument he is trying to make, Harris explains: “This need, almost a compulsion, to keep reality at arm's length is almost a pandemic in our society. This explains not only the incessant, frenetic music, but also the drugs, the alcohol, the mania for sports, the addiction to television, the intense preoccupation with curiosities – all of which act like opiates, dulling any sense of reality." (Harris 8) . People do everything they can to “dampen every.