Sunday, November 9, 2014

It seems that all modern literature can do is bear witness to the tragic events through stories about individuals.  the events of 9/11 cannot be understood from a sensible aspect. How can Americans understand what other countries think and feel about us and our way of life?  How can we understand the extreme hatred that some people feel towards us?  The writers in this cluster wrote about individuals and how the events of that day impacted them.  But, like DeLillo writes in, In the Ruins of the Future, "For the next fifty years people who were in the area when the attacks occurred will claim to have been there.  In time, some of them will believe it.  Others will claim to have lost friends or relatives, although they did not."(4036)  This is one of the limits of the individual mind to bear witness.  We become caught up in the tragedy and sometimes the events become so real to us we think we are involved in them.  "This is also the counter-narrative, a shadow history of false memories and imagined loss." (4036) The further away we get from 9/11 the more people feel the need to hold onto the stories.  There is a need to remember individual lives and not have them reduced to political rhetoric.

1 comment:

  1. Sarah,
    What did you think about some of the other claims DeLillo makes in this reading? What sorts of counternarratives have we created for this event?
    Also, your post reminds me of the quote from Updike- "Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness."

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