Diana Taylor developed a very interesting narrative in her essay. I feel it is a story of futility. But first off, I found she wrote a powerful beginning. The first lines, “When I saw the north tower of the World Trade Center in flames, about five minutes after the first plane hit, I thought, “God, it’s going to take a lot of time and money to fix that.” That is such a raw reaction! I feel as if the media/government tries to pave over reactions like this. When an entire country witnesses something like 9/11, I can only imagine that thoughts ranged from people saying, “Oh my God, we need to do something!”, to someone thinking, “Do we deserve this?”, and others saying, “Thank goodness it wasn’t me…” Human emotions aren’t always the prettiest, most poetic things, and I feel as if the media avoids them for that reason: To avoid raw, passionate, obscene emotions. She then goes on to describe the change of emotions over to panic, fear, worry, and then just trying to grasp what happened.
The overriding narrative seemed to be that of an outsider looking in. Diana Tayloer wrote of how she was neither “hero” or “victim”. The people of the city suffered the loss of friends and family, they were shaken up and confused, yet they were deemed “spectators”. Some did all they could do try to help, waiting in lines for hours to try and donate blood, putting up memorials and praying for the lives of the lost, and still they were called “spectators”. Neither a hero or victim, just something in between. Taylor wrote of a benefit concert that was held in October after 9/11, saying she felt like the entire crowd was there as a backdrop and nothing more. I cannot imagine the frustration that must’ve been felt! All the while, these people stuck between hero and victim still found ways to let out their grief. Pictures were taken none-the-less, and memorials were put up everywhere. It seems the media/government can define people however they want, but that never has to change the people.
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