Hey everyone, hope you had a good break!
The topic for this week’s blog will be 9/11, or more specifically, its effects on the US. The reason I’ve chosen to talk about this due to the book I just finished reading, which is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely loud & incredibly close. The main plot of this novel follows Oskar Schell, a 9-year-old boy who lost his father in the Twin Towers’ terrorist attack, trying to find the lock of a key he found in his father’s closet. Throughout his “adventure”, Oskar meets many people who have experience loss in some certain way, as well as coming to terms with his own father’s death. Very interesting book, although it may be a bit hard to follow at first.
Due to my young age when these attacks occurred, I never was able to experience the tragedy of this event personally; but I have seen its consequences. The war against terror, the TSA, an overall high level of suspicion, these are all the aftermath of those fateful attacks. I’ve always found it these effects very interesting; how symbolic and traumatizing these attacks were on the USA. Nearly 3,000 people died when the towers collapsed, so its classification as a tragedy is no mistake. Yet when compared to other tragedies, like the bombing of Dresden and Hiroshima (which the book talks about), it seems a lot smaller in scale and scope; yet it wasn’t. Since the war of 1812, nearly 200 hundred years before 9/11, the US had never been attacked by an outside force. Add to that the fact that there wasn’t a clear cut enemy to blame, no war to justify these attacks, the American people were left bewildered and broken, their pride shattered; like Oskar says in the book, it didn’t make sense. However, this pride did resurface, in the form of nationalism, or “patriotism”. In retrospect, this may have not been the healthiest way to heal from this wound. Wars, paranoia, (in)security, these became staples of US policy for the beginning of the 21st century, and they still are to this day. The fact that many refer to today as a “post 9/11 world” speaks volumes about its effects on, not just the USA, but the entire world. The planes crashing into the towers could be considered an equivalent to the phrase: “the shot heard round the world”.
If you guys are interested in finding out more about “post 9/11” USA, I recommend you check out these links: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/11/coming-of-age-in-post-911-world/15474695/ and http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/10-seismic-changes-since-911/2013/09/10/4499cf18-19b4-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_gallery.html. Both offer pretty interesting insight on how the US has changed from these events and how their consequences are still having effects on our world today. I’ve always found it interesting how, barely a year in the new century, we have already experienced an event which will resonate across history for a very long time.
That’s it for me today, hope you all have a good week and I’ll see you guys later!