We are also talking about wars and terrorism this week, but we have moved from Foer’s novel to a new article called “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect”, written by Judith Butler. The main idea of Butler’s article is about the dislocation of perspective and the vulnerability of human. Butler pointed out that when people was looking at the tragedy of 9/11, many of them ignored certain things like the well-being or the death of the others, however, they only pay heavy attention to everything that matters the most to them. Meanwhile, there are several insightful questions in the article that worth considering: when is life grievable? what do we ignore? and who do we need to mourn?

Personally, 9/11 merely has some impact on me. I was in primary school when first I heard about that tragedy. What I could see on the media were how the government has react, how the American economy was impacted and how the refugees have moved on to new life. However, I could hardly hear any report of the died people. As I mentioned in the previous blog, what we see is what the media wanted us to see. The media might concealed something but I believe those people deserves to be concerned. Like Butler has mentioned “what allows a life to become visible precariousness and its need for shelter, and what is it that keeps us from seeing or understanding certain lives in this way?” In some people’s eyes, they should focus more on their own benefit rather than concerning strangers’ life and it seems to me that people has the tendency to ignore things that are not related to them.  For example, I haven’t realized the seriousness of 9/11 until i turned high school. However, I still believe 9/11 is very distant. We can not say 9/11 has nothing to do with me. The exchange rates of currency might be changed, the airport security might be more restricted. But these events seem to be so remote as well. people would be indifferent if it did not impacted their life somehow.

Secondly, Butler also pointed out that everyone should accept his vulnerability to others, not just physically but also mentally. For example, people can easily get hurt, especially at war, but we can not deny the emotional impact of the war, even if the war zone is distant. Oskar in Foer’s novel i would be a great example. Oskar’s father lost his life during 9/11. Since then, Oskar has developed obsession on his father and become a entirely different boy to his family. Although Oskar hasn’t been in 9/11, we can still easily see his mental trauma, which magnifies the negative impact of terrorism and the emotional vulnerability of human. Foer’s novel is realistic example of Butler’s argument. Foer backs Butler up by showing how Oskar has emotionally suffer from the grief of the death of his father. Moreover, Butler’s article has conceptualized Foer’s story, like why Oskar was so vulnerable and why people were so indifferent about it.

In the first ASTU lesson, we started to read the novel called Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. This book talks about one tragic story of a family in post-9-11. The boy named Oskar Schell has lost his father during this tragedy and he suffered a lot from that. He had extreme difficulties facing his father sudden death and somehow developed kind of symptom of PTSD, such as irrational thought and obsession of his father. Personally, I think Oskar is a weird kid. In the book,Oskar was portrayed as a mind wondering boy who is always inventing things. He was extremely curious about everything that is related to his father and he tried to find out how his father die, which is literally impossible at that time. Moreover, he abreacted his irrational anger of his father’s death on his mother. I believe Oskar is a character with more infection than Naomi, the girl we read in Obasan.

This book implicitly reflect the negative effect of war on terror. We can easily see that terrorism has the power to distort a kid’s psychological well-being. By using a small group of people, Oskar’s family, to reflect the situation of a larger society, Jonathan has made this book compelling and realistic. However, I found out that not every people is perfectly aware of it at that time. I was grade 4 when this tragedy happened, but I haven’t realize the seriousness of that event until I started my high school and I was not the minority that was unaware. Perhaps I was in China and the information faded when it got into our ears. What I heard the most at that time is about American economy’s fluctuation. All people were talking about is how America was going to react economically and how their own country was going to benefit, rather than showing their concern to families and children who were traumatized. Only when I finished the book, I realized how influential terrorism is, especially on children. It is quite revealing that people sometime cares more about what can they gain and ignores the well-being of the other’s.

Apart from the sociological perspective, I also found the book very intriguing. The difference between the novel I read before and this novel is that Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is not novel that consist of only English characters in line. There was plenty of other element in this novel, such as letters Oksar wrote, interesting illustration. Some illustrations in the book seems to be totally irrelevant to the text, but somehow I can actually feel the implicit connecting in between.