In the Ruins of the Future

“In the Ruins of the Future” Delillo has captured the disbelieved and horror that this could happen to the United States.  The idealistic nation woke up to a nightmare on 9/11.  I too thought when I first saw the news reports that a plane had struck the tower and that the pilot must have been drunk or high to not have missed such a large target as a building. Never did it cross my mind but of course when the second tower was hit there could be no mistake.  The terrorists did not see Americans as human beings only enemies of their religion. Zealots thought to be heroes if they killed Americans.  The survivors of the attack worked together to help their neighbors and pulled together to survive.  The TV coverage was intense. “When we say it was unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can’t tilt it to the slant of our perceptions.” (Delillo 4040). The hard truth was someone unnamed and unknown had planned and executed over three thousand men, women and children.  The last part of the story where the Muslim woman is praying is revealing in that the greatness of New York and America is its ability to accommodate diversity in the human race. “But the dead are their own nation and race, one identity, young or old, devout or unbelieving-a union of souls.” The dead unite the living.