The Post-9/11 America

                Our discussion today in class really got me thinking about the post-September 11 America. We spent the last two classes talking about the parallels between Oskar’s search for the key’s meaning and the United States’ search for meaning behind the tragedy.  The argument was made that we as a country never dealt with the “why” of the attacks and rather distracted ourselves with our hunt for the people who carried them out.

As I was working on today’s quiz it occurred to me that this parallel could be extended into Oskar’s relationship with his mother. The figure of “authority” throughout the novel, Oskar is under the impression that his mother is ignoring his grief and what he is going through. But he soon learned that she was helping to orchestrate the search for Oskar in or to aid in his grief and in his recovery. It was a distraction, sure, but there’s the sense that it was a necessary distraction, a way for Oskar to heal.

To me it feels like this could be a connection drawn between Mrs. Schell and the American government. After 9/11, American’s were sad, frustrated, confused, and scared – just like Oskar.  So maybe the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Weapons of Mass Destruction was a distraction from the bigger philosophical questions about why such tragedy had to happen, why these people hate us so terribly. But so what if it was? Putting Americans in opposition to such an easily designated evil “other” may have been reductive and misleading and even racist, but it was what it took for Americans to get through the tragedy, to deal with our grief. In the lifetime of our generation, was there another moment where this country was so together? Or could even manage to be on the same side about something, anything? We may not have been paying attention to the bigger picture, to the bigger problems, but it helped to get us through the tragedy and the grief.