Major Issues Faced by Contemporary American Society - Assignment Example

Reaction Paper 2007 “Talk of the Town: September 11, 2000” by John Updike The crisis that America encountered on September 11, 2001, with the terrorist attack on World Trade Center has been outstandingly described by one of the country’s great author, John Updike. With the macabre and grotesque attack, he seemed to be “Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous…”, as he says in the opening line of the article. The line itself explains the tragedy and its upshots, the dreadful situation one is unexpectedly called upon. Each one of us would find parallels in our person lives, the inconceivable situations we are pushed to only to come out with a kind of epiphany about truth as an abstraction. The day began just like any other usual day when one goes out for daily business, to office or, like the author, who “happened” to be calling some relatives in the tenth-floor apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Noticing the event from there, “the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers had the false intimacy of television, on a day of perfect reception” (Updike, 1127). A gargantuan catastrophe like the devastation of apparently such an unshakable building could be palpable only as a television program of science fiction. The litle kid and her babysitter showed him the flames of the north tower and the smoke spiraling above the building from the window not even a mile away, giving one the eerie feeling of being near to the hellish fires that tortured Lazarous. At first, it gave the impression of something rather bizzare than ghastly. Dappled with pieces of paper smoke bending and coiling into the “cloudless sky, and strange inky rivulets ran down the giant structures vertically corrugated surface”. Those inky streams pouring down the wavy surfaces of WTC could be blood, mixed with ashes and dirts, or with ink, used for printers — indicative of a totally unprepared gruesome, heinous calamity affective innocent lives amidst a busy business schedule (Updike, 1127). I could associate my own feeling on that day, although I was not grown enough to remember everything vividly. I heard most of it from my parents. It appeared very much like a usual working day and it still stays normal in my memory except that it tore my mind the way it did every American’s, whether of my generation or older to me. At that point, I was unable to come to terms with the size of the tragedy, the inner meaning of which was that thousands of innocent people could just be butchered and that America can never reassure its people of their safety. The WTC, claimed Updike, was not the kind of building like the much-loved gritty, spired downtown high rised building of the America in the thirties. It had rather created an insipid backdrop to the “Brooklyn view of lower Manhattan”, ousting some of the citys tallest building. Yet, as Updike, considered, nobody seemed to have the doubt of WTC’s ever-lastingness, simply because of its architectural reserve and enomity So even when they “watched the second tower burst into ballooning flame (an intervening building had hidden the approach of the second airplane)”, the thought that, “as on television, this was not quite real; it could be fixed”. The “technocracy” the towers represented would find means to douse “the fire and reverse the damage” (Updike,1127-28). I also could never believe that some people totally alien to our soil and culture, to our people, to Mahattan or Brooklyn, the culture which, in the truest sense, acted like a melting pot assimilating different cutures and communities acroos the world could be so drastically invaded, its people and its air could be reduced so easily to ashes. Even after the attack, I felt no threat even after having a sense of the loss that it had made by destroying and imposing pain. The worldly wisdom suggests that one grows out of experience, gets to know the harder side of the reality through painful experiences. But I must admit that it had not been so, in may case. Was it the same with Updike? Even after seeing “the Brooklyn buildings roof, the south tower dropped from the screen” of their viewing, when “ it fell straight down like an elevator”, with a chinking shake growling of the sudden pain “clearly “across the mile of air.” He knew that it was apocalyse then, thousands had died and they remained “clung to each other as if we ourselves were falling”, everyone only stuck within his cocoon, the same being true for the other building across the East River—they appeared to remain dazzling meek. Many people my father said, vacantly looked, as did author John Updike, at those two colossal buildings standing for the nation’s might and dignity, “an empty spot appeared… beneath the sky that, but for the sulfurous cloud streaming south toward the ocean, was pure blue, rendered uncannily pristine by the absence of jet trails” (1128). On the TV screens the bursting ower “was played and replayed, much rehearsed moments from a nightmare ballet”. Yes we all saw it. All the time, exhausted and fatigued by the repetition of the gory moments of our history. The intended message of the nonfiction piece is to instill a kind of courage and cheerfuness against the devastations that America faced on the fateful day. The terrible attack has its seeming justifications, Updike, objectively comments, defining those terrorists as “determined men who have transposed their own lives to a martyrs afterlife can still inflict an amount of destruction that defies belief. “ But what to do next with such insane, crazy sorts, with those who kill thousands of innocent Americans, with a “ fury that requires abstraction—that turns a planeful of peaceful passengers, children included, into a missile the faceless enemy deserves.” Here is the brave answer, the point of his writing such an article that asserts : “But fly again we must; risk is a price of freedom…”. Walking around,Brooklyn Heights on that tragic afternoon, with ashes moving in the air of the empty roads with hardly any cars and outdoor lunches still continuing nrmally on Montague Street, he had the feeling that, even with all its weaknesses here is a country “worth fighting for”. Freedom, he said, “reflected in the streets diversity and daily ease, felt palpable. It is mankinds elixir, even if a few turn it to poison”(Updike, 1129). The theme of the piece thus stresses that America is the cure for every ill of human civilization albeit some trying to give it the tone of a poison. This piece is nonfiction primarily because the entite account narrated comes from real incidents without any attempt to distort, change,and maipulate, the flow of its happenings. The depcition of the tragedy puts the narrator to a bystanders position,just like a reporter with akken sense of observation. Fictional prose usually gives the narrator the freedom to change the ambiance and the setting according to his/her own preference. Her no such attempt has been made. That does not mean that nonfiction does not need imagination to narrate incidents, as has been remarkably done here. The way the whole tragedy has ben revoked, alomost delving into the psyche of a nation traumatized by the attack, shocked by the suddeness of such a ghastly cruel action, needs imagination of a creative writer. Lines “like an empty spot had appeared, as if by electronic command, beneath the sky that, but for the sulfurous cloud streaming south toward the ocean, was pure blue, rendered uncannily pristine by the absence of jet trails” immeditetly present before us the morbid scenes we watch in war films, or gruwsome human catastrophes in the novels set on the context of concentration camps or gulags. “On Social Equality” by Gunnar Myrdal In "Social Equality", Gunnar Myrdal finds the basis of denying social equality begins from "The kernel of the popular theory of "no social equality" to be followed with a firm resolve of the whites to oppose merger and thus maintain "the purity of the white race" (Myrdal, 956). Gunnar Myrdal explains in his essay that the white race thinks disparity to be essential to put marriage between whites and blacks off. “On Social Equality”, which is basically a review of “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison, a short story that stands for the African- American fight for equality .after the ending of slavery. Myrdal almost echoes the point of Ellison in his essay a selection from his book An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. In “Battle Royal”, the narrator describes his speech delivered during his graduation ceremony from the high school in one of those white, racist, southerner dominated school. The lecture (where he insisted the blacks to be obedient and submissive for their own progress) was hailed so much the town’s important white citizen wanted it to be re-read at an assembly in the evening. When he arrived there he was informed that he should take part in a game called Battle Royal, as planned before (a game enacting the Black infighting for money and position) where he and his other black peers were blindfolded and pushed to the boxing ring to attack each other brutally—a game where he was defeated in the last round. Before the start of the game a starkly naked white blonde girl was taken in pageant in front of them insisted by the white to watch the nude girl. After the game the blacks were taken in place where a rug , full of gold coins and some crumpled banknotes thrown in front them where those black youth almost dived in to collect their booty and only to realize that the rug was electrified. In his lecture the narrator while citing the black leader Booker T. Washington, misquoted him, replacing the expression “social responsibility” with “Social Equality” stirring an aggressive reaction from the drunk audience. He had to apologize for the mistake and then was cheered by the audience and was awarded with a briefcase in which he received his scholarship to get admitted to the College for the blacks, His happiness was short-lived when he came to know that coins for which his peers were in a mad rush were not made of gold, but those were useless brass coins. Regarding the white woman standing naked between the black male, Myrdal’s comment was that in their panic and in their aversion to the chauvinist white males, the white woman finds her more equally and empathetically treated by the black males. In his essay, Gunnar Myrdal stresses: The fixation on the purity of white womanhood, and also part of the intensity of emotion surrounding the whole sphere of segregation and discrimination, are to be understood as the backwashes of the sore conscience on the part of white men for their own ore their compeers relations with, or desires for, Negro women (958). Ellison supplies a illustrative explanation of Myrdals philosophy in "Battle Royal." Myrdal’s article is a clearly an analysis of the nature of white racism in America even after slavery days were over. It is a critical analysis of Ellison’s short story and hence falls to the genre of scholastic inquiry. It does not have an imaginary storyline, a protagonist and other characters needed for a fictional prose. It definitely needs imagination, to understand a problem whether from creative or from an academic perspective. But in case of academic prose, the style centers around topic, instead of the details, that is, the use of metaphors, the setting, the character development, etc. Myrdal is more concerned to expose the social reality of white racism from a cultural perspective. Works Cited Updike, John (2005). “Talk of the Town: September 11, 2001.” In Barnet, Sylvan (ed.) Literature for Composition, 7th ed. New York: Longman. P 1127-29. Myrdal, Gunnar (2005). “On Social Equality”. In Barnet, Sylvan (ed.) Literature for Composition, 7th ed. New York: Longman Ellison, Ralph (2005). “Battle Royal”. In Barnet, Sylvan (ed.) Literature for Composition, 7th ed. New York: Longman Read More