Question 2

It's a stretch, to relate this woman's encounter to a terrorist attack. I would never have otherwise connected the two. But now that I think about it, it's clearly understood; the helplessness, the confusion, the discomfort and remorse. It's fear.
Delillo describes how these paintings can give a person a sense of disparity and uncertainty. I and many others felt the same on 9-11. I can tell you exactly where I was, exactly what I was wearing, and exactly what visage swept across the faces of my classmates and teachers as the news was broadcasted over the school intercom. People were scared, people were uncertain, people were helpless. I remember how dreary the school day proceeded. I remember how shocked the world was around me. All day and the many weeks to fallow they showed and replayed the footage of the plane soaring into the towers. You could see the people on the top floors, how scared they were, throwing themselves out of the windows praying something might catch them, that they might not have to die. Imagine the regret they felt for getting up at all that day. for going through their monotonous routine of kissing the wife or husband good-bye and commuting to a regular work day.
Seconds after the incident, hospitals all around prepared for chaos...but no one came. No one needed to be saved. The sad and depressing story of no casualties, but only death. And if you weren't dead then you weren't close enough to need help at all.
I went down to the water front after class and stared at the New York City skyline, but it wasn't there. There was no skyline, just smoke; black, thick smoke. It was gone.
Do you sense my remorse of the hundreds of lives that I didn't know, or otherwise care about, that were taken? Do you sense my anger? Do you sense the despair and uncertainty of all those who watched it happen but could do nothing to save these people who have no other choice but to leap from 50 stories up? Do you remember? Watching bodies fly from the building as it fell? Do you sense it?
Paintings may give you a small spec of emotion that makes you feel uncomfortable, you may even feel a little remorse, but living it, being there, watching the gore and being able to do nothing to help these lives makes you "feel" more than any painting can. 9-11 was hard. 9-11 was devastating. 9-11 will never be forgot by those who lived it. Those people are, only after the fact, my siblings. Those people now hold a place in my heart, and they will live on in our spirits until we die off, and only textbooks can try to describe the history of where once stood the Twin Towers.