== Clarity... == 

 Can anyone elucidate what this actually means... 

 He moved back to his parents' house in Little Rock, Arkansas, shortly thereafter. He called his friends to say goodbye, before he stopped speaking on February 14, and re-read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. 

  
 Does that mean Hicks, due to his illness, became incapable of speech, or does that mean he cut himself off from the outside world? 

 As Hicks made a living from what he said, it would be a bitter irony that he was silenced at the end!