Talk of the Town

These articles showed me two different sides to the 911 terrorist attack. Of course there were many different opinions on this tragic event, but only two of them were recognized throughout these articles. In my opinion, I agreed more with the first article, rather than the second. The first one viewed the side of America being a strong country, which, I believe, is. Updike was one who trusted that everything was going to be okay. Susan described the terrorists in the second story and how they were "courageous" and certainly not cowards.

John Updike was a witness of this disaster. He sat as he watched thousands of lives being taken by the destruction of two historical buildings. One sentence that stuck with me was, "Risk is a price of freedom." This was interesting to me because it's entirely true. America is a country built off of the freedom of people. People like these terrorists take the risks as a consequence of our freedom. We couldn't stop them. We couldn't ask them politely. It was a secret attack that nobody could have done anything about. The sight had to have been horrendous, but like Updike said, we have a duty to go on living.

Susan Sontag and John Updike were very contrasting people. While John believed that America was a strong country, Susan thought the opposite. When I was reading this article, Susan made herself seem like she was against America and everything that this country is about. She disagreed with the Americans who thought that these terrorists were cowardly. These men were willing to risk their lives in order to kill innocent American lives. She took this action as being brave. Bravery shouldn't depend on who is being killed or who is doing the killing, bravery should be taken as an act of being heroic. Bombing two foreign historical buildings is not courageous. It's selfishness. They didn't create this to help their country, I think they did it to hurt ours.