Is this Ben?

"Nichols does use a few fine Simon and Garfunkel songs (written long before the film was conceived) to pump poetic and intellectual content into The Graduate. Because the songs, especially "The Sounds of Silence," are so concise, lyrical, eloquent, we're tempted to believe that the film contains their insights and that Ben understands them. We're supposed to assume that Ben shares Paul Simon's perceptions of "people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening" in a world whose "words of the prophet are written on the subway walls," but in truth Ben couldn't begin putting the world in that kind of order. He's only a beer-drinking Time magazine type, as Hoffman recognized, rather harmlessly stupid and awkward, but tricked up with a suffering face and an Angst-ridden song intent on persuading us that he's an alienated generational hero."

~- Stephen Farber and Estelle Changas, Film Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 3, (Spring 1968).