His Experience

Art Spiegelman has a very interesting perspective of 9/11. He was there, many writers have shared their ideas, and feelings of what happened to this Nation but I truly believe that for those that were there it's different. The things he talks about, the images he displays give an understanding. This wasn't just about those people in the towers, or the people running in as hero's it's about the everyday people. The children still in school unaware but only blocks away, it's about the parents rushing to get their child, filled with fear and anxiety about the life of their own child being so close to something so terrifying. Spiegelman's comics have always said something to me, his ability to not only tell a large story in the development of the Twin Towers and their collapse but to tell about his individual experience and how he felt. He makes something incredibly vast so personal and I absorb it everytime. The image of the frame work of the tower was mesmerizing and his story about how this image that he clearly saw, that stood before him was never captured and how for him it was the most important image to share. I loved it and I wished there was an image in real life of the towers this way. 

I'm conflicted writing this now, Eleanor wrote such a beautiful, moving post about her experience during 9/11 and I feel for her. And I know that for us that weren't close to the impact we reacted differently. There was this fear, and feeling of insecurity but we didn't live in it. We didn't smell it everyday. We don't have to question the health of our family member based on their proximity to the crash site. It's hard for me even to understand. The complexity of an event like this isn't something we can easily absorb. I remember 9/11 and I remember the day Osama Bin Laden died, I was woken in the middle of the night. My boyfriend's (now husband's) best friend was blowing up our phones, he just kept calling and when I answered he said to turn on the TV and wake up Dylan. I didn't know how to feel, the same as when I was only 9. I was unsure what to think about all this and I remember thinking back to that day. Thinking back and feeling that same uncertainty. I don't think we're meant to ever understand things like this. I don't think when tragedies happen we are supposed to be able to understand them to the fullest. That's probably one of the most difficult aspects, that we still don't understand. Even if we had all the fact, if it was a conspiracy, if it was something bigger I just don't think it'll ever be something we can say we get. Death isn't something we really ever understand. I don't think we are supposed to. Idk I'm rambling now but this assignment is one of deep reflection and it's hard to gather your thoughts on something so painful. I guess it's just hard to know what to say because there isn't really anything you can ever say to make it better or to change things. The world changed after 9/11. People, a nation and it's art; everything changed. Was that change for the better? Was it for the worse? Are we the "Greatest Country in the World anymore? Or are we a shadow of that former glory?

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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.

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Varieties of Religious Experience

All casualties matter, none matter more or less than any other, but each event has a different impact on us individually and as a nation.  The difference with the attacks on 9/11 is that it happened in our country, on our soil. We, as a nation, had to face that fact that we were not invincible.  John Updike's story, Varieties of Religious Experience, gives the reader a glimpse of how the events of 9/11 effected a handful of lives.  Even though the story is fiction, I think Updike gives a good idea of the terror and anguish that some of victims must have experienced in their last moments. I felt pity for victims in the story. Jim Finch and his last phone call to his wife was so sad.  And Carolyn who in her last moments says, "Dear, Lord, have mercy."  Updike makes the victims real people that the reader cares about, not just casualties of some tragic event in history.  The characters in the story represent the real people who died.  They had lives and families and friends. The moment these characters realize they will soon die and for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time adds to the terror and the shock of the event.  The casualties matter to the families and friends that have been left behind to come to terms with random senseless violence, in a world that at that moment does seem to be Godless.  The number of casualties does not matter.  The heart does not feel more sadness or pity because the casualties are higher. Updike has two of the terrorists stories included does he want the reader to feel sympathy or pity for them?  Why did he include their story?

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"Does reality actually outstrip fiction?" -Baudrillard

“Does reality actually outstrip fiction?”(Baudrillard4027). Reality is the basis of our world. Factuality defines us. When does the idolization of violence trump the dissidence of verity?  The human mind feasts upon the the travesties amid our world. It is in a sense, our own personal cinema. Although mostly unconscious thought, the globalization and detriment of it’s failures brings forth a sense of excitement. The collapse of the Twin Towers for the world represented the fall from power. “Whereas we were dealing before with an uninterrupted profusion of banal images and a seamless flow of sham events, the terrorist act in New York has resuscitated both images and events”(Baudrillard4026).   The event of terrorism brought a sense of realism into the minds of many Americans, which quickly transcended into “the act of violence.” September eleventh become a spoken date throughout all American households. It ascended beyond a historical event into a symbol of Patriotism and disparagement against United States soil. The glorification created a sense of mysticism encompassing the event. It was no longer history, but yet a cinematic production. “This is our theatre of cruelty, the only one we have left-extraordinary in that it unites the most extreme degree of the spectacular and the highest level of challenge... It is at one and the same dazzling micromodel of a kernel of real violence with the maximum possible echo”(Baudrillard4027). The dramatization of the Twin Towers will forever embody the fall of American. The greatest power was brought down. The collapse will be continually exalted as the day America felt true violence; the day terrorism ceased American power. 

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I Was Only in Third Grade

Reading the multi-media presentation on 9/11 was rough. I was in third grade when this happened, I didn't really understand what was happening. We were TOLD it was a tragedy, we were TOLD it was a devastating, but we couldn't really understand. As a wife, listening to the message of the wife to her husband immediately brought me to tears, I can't imagine anyone listening to this message, and not being moved emotionally. I think this presentation puts us in the right frame of mind though. I don't want to say brings us back to that day because for most of us in this class we were very young and didn't really understand like we can now, instead it gives us the ability. To finally understand, to really feel what the rest of a nation felt. The vulnerability of a Nation that thought it was indestructible, that calls itself the greatest country in the world. I went through this presentation before doing the readings so I wanted to make my feelings clear before sharing my thoughts and opinions on the texts.  

In John Updike's short story (Novella) "Varieties of Religious experiences" we literally experience so many perspectives of 9/11. From a father losing his religion in his worry about his daughter, to a muslim in a strip club contemplating his trip to paradise and his reward of virgins. Which on a side note never seemed like much of a reward to me. I'm not sure I'd want to have sex with a bunch of virgins, none of them would have a clue what they're doing. It sounds more awkward and boring than anything, but I digress. Hands down the most striking of all the stories is of the married couple on the phone. In my annotations I just kept writing "oh my god" I couldn't say anything else, and then the wife in the story started to say it too, "Oh my God, Jim." (Updike 4054). And again right after again Marcy cries, "Oh my God." (Updike 4054). Tears literally filled my eyes, it was unbearably hard to read a lump formed in my throat as he gave her permission to live, to enjoy her life. To not spend the rest of her days mourning. This unwavering love, this phone call that began as a normal conversation asking your husband to pick up something from the store ending in the revelation that you will never see him again, you will never talk to him ever again. This is it, your last moment with him on this earth, over the phone. Completely helpless, hearing his fear, seeing the burning building he's trapped in with your own eyes. What I do remember from 9/11 is my teacher crying, I remember we went into a room where there was a TV and we watched, at first stunned in silence and then I heard her gasp. I didn't know why she'd gasp until I heard the adults murmuring under their breathe to each other, in disbelief that they were jumping. And if you looked at the TV you saw specks of black floating from the tower to the ground, we didn't know what it was until we heard their revolution. People jumping to their deaths, they had no other choice than suffocation.This story was rough, like I said I was young when this happened but that doesn't mean I don't remember it. That day sticks out from every single one in my elementary school years. I don't remember my science fair projects, I don't remember who I had a crush on. I remember the day we all got up, and went into the same room as all the other third graders and the teachers just turned on the TV's. No explanation, nothing, just let us witness history. Were we too young, maybe. But so was Dan's granddaughter. In the end of the story it's clear she'd changed, her innocence was gone. It happens to every child. You can't fight it, the moment they no longer see the world through rose colored glasses. My husband's mother talked about seeing it happen to her kids when their father walked out, when they realized he wasn't coming back. She saw an immediate change in them. This happened to an entire generation of kids. That all lost the remainder of their innocence on the same day, at the same moment. When American was no longer "The Greatest Country in the World" when they were no longer infallible, when we no longer felt safe.  Like I said this story encompasses so much. It's impossible to discuss it in one blog. But it's important to read, it's important not to forget, what people went through, how this country changed. We can never go back to before, that's not how it works. As Dan says at the end we must learn from our mistakes and move on. But American's don't go back, we move on. We just can't forget. 

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Maus II

Maus II was definitely an adult visual story.  In the story I wasn’t sure what kind of animal or man was the narrator.  Everyone wore a mask. Did this signify that people wear masks all the time and no one can clearly be recognized?  The narrator is a commercial success but feels depressed and has survivor remorse because his dad survived the holocaust.  He sits at his desk as the bodies pile up. The even bodies do not have human faces they are only emaciated corpses. Spiegelman needs to see his shrink who also happens to be a survivor.  The narrator has issues with trying to understand his dad and what he went through in the concentration camps. “No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.” (Spiegelman 3772).    The only character that I saw that didn’t wear a mask was the German soldier beating the Jewish prisoner, Appel. Is the German soldier revealing his true face? I think that the adult comic/visual book helps the reader to visualize and comprehend the horror of the holocaust.

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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.

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