The Opposite of Boredom

The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 is an event that many Americans experienced and will never forget. No one, however, will ever be able to imagine the attack through the eyes of the terrorists themselves. Despite this losing battle to find true understanding, Martin Amis does a unique job portraying the event through Muhammad Atta’s perspective as one of the suicide pilots to fly into the World Trade Center. Although we will never know what these few men thought in the time leading up to the attacks, Amis adds a new perspective to 9/11.

I thought it was particularly interesting when Amis wrote, “It was appropriate, perhaps, and not paradoxical, that terror should also sharply promote its most obvious opposite. Boredom.” I do not fully understand what Amis means by this, but I think most people would agree that 9/11 promoted boredom. If anything, it set in a motion a world of skepticism and harsh criticism. This includes culture, race, government, politics, and more. Regardless of what Atta and the other terrorists intended to prove, I do not believe boredom was a result.

People will continue to write and speculate about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I don’t know if we’ll ever be satisfied with a certain view of the events leading up to and following September 11 but many people provide interesting perspectives about that historical day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/books/review/06filkins.html?pagewanted=1&ref=mohamedatta

Trying to Understand

"The Last Days of Muhammad Atta" is extraordinarily speculative. While some details can be confirmed like what Atta's will stated and his information from al-Qaeda because they were recovered in his lost bag at Logan.

(http://web.archive.org/web/20080526011027/http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uslugg274705186apr17,0,6096142.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print)

This makes the aspects of the story that are taken with artistic liberty more convincingly realistic. Thoughts and sensations experienced are obviously fabricated but this does something very important. They create a person that can be examined and an attempt to understand can be made by people in modern Western society. Readers can see the world that made these men monsters through the eyes of Atta. On the advice of Adichie, one can't start with the story of the Middle East with the 19 hijackers and 9/11 but instead consider how it got this way. The story paints a picture of a religious extremist that isn't religious but feels a need for something. A sort of desperation is seen in Atta and can be seen in many young terrorists. Does a person's environment and upbringing excuse these people? No. But hopefully we can see what it is that brought them to do it.

"Muhammad Atta was not religious; he was not even especially political. He had allied himself with the militants because jihad was, by many magnitudes, the most charismatic idea of his generation. To unite ferocity and rectitude in a single word: nothing could compete with that." Amis pg 3

The era of jihad is coming to a close in the midst of the Arab Spring but while some problems may be solved in this transition, other problems will definitely arise. Atta's story can be taken a cautionary tale that detail the recipe to create a generation of militants.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/opinion/04friedman.html?ref=thomaslfriedman)

The constant theme of "Last Days" is looking into the mind of someone that the world hates. Atta destroyed the North Tower on 9/11, killing thousands of people. His story is an important one to tell because it affects so many people, directly and indirectly. It also examines the creation of a monster and what can really drive people commit the worst atrocities.

Two sided story for 9/11

I find it appropriate to read the story of Muhammad Atta, this week. With the ten year anniversary of September 11, just among us this last Sunday, this story gives us a chance to see the opposing side of what happened on September 11, 2001. Many have to read, to what may have caused such events. At the beginning of the story Muhammad may have seemed like a normal man going along with his business on a normal day, but sure enough this was not a normal day for millions. The man that was in charge of the hijacking of Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Center.

"Purify your heart and cleanse it of stains. Forget and be oblivious to the thing which is call World. Muhammad Atta was not religious; he was not even especially political. He had allied himself with the militants because jihad was, by man magnitudes, the most charismatic idea of his generation. To unite ferocity and rectitude in a single word: nothing could compete with that. [...] If you took away all the rubbish about faith, then fundamentalism suited his character, and with an almost sinister precision." (Amis, 3)

The world may never know this man's specific intentions and reasoning. This just goes to show that even a highly educated man can be influenced to fabricate evil.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=757

Yes, we as Americans are very patriotic to our country, but we can not be subjected and caught in the single story. There is always two sides to any story; some informative and some emotional. In conclusion, I do have to say Sept. 11th will be a date that Americas continue to remember for centuries.

Human

Every individual is ultimately biologically and emotionally human, differing only in ethnicity, religion, or background. Adichie ensures the emphasis of this theme throughout her short story, “A Private Experience”. The author chooses to describe a scene in which two women are forced to seek shelter together from a religious riot between their respective religions. Interestingly enough, in her story about two women of differing cultures and religions, Adichie utilizes numerous moments to highlight the vast similarities between them. Adichie decides to prove this theme on both a biological and emotional level. Throughout the short story the narrator, Chika, and the unnamed women aid each other through a number of physical discomforts. Chika aids the women through breastfeeding pains and the women lends her cloth to Chika during Chika’s menstruation. These two scenes play a significant role in showing the parallels between the women. Even though they arise from separate backgrounds, they are both still human. Each woman knew how to help the other despite the unfamiliarity between the two. Adichie uses these scenes in order to acknowledge the equality of all people through a biological perspective. Further linking comparisons between the women, Adichie shows that both women share emotional similarities as the display their capacity for concern. Chika has her missing sister while the woman has her missing daughter. As both console each other, it becomes evident that there the differences between the two women on an emotional level are not vast. In fact, the differences between the two women occur from things relating to culture and background. Chika is unfamiliar with the clothes that the woman wears, the praying style, and the obvious language barrier. This becomes especially evident in the charred corpse scene. When the corpse is burned and stripped of its clothes and outlier appearance, Chika cannot tell what religion it used to be. Adichie uses this scene to further prove that in the end, everyone is still human.

This is an article that furthers the discussion that race doesn’t exist per se and everyone is the same biologically:

https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/gjay/www/Whiteness/realityofrace.htm

Stopping and Realizing Everyone Has Their Own Story

"The Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Adichie was a very touching and eye opening video for me to watch. It came to a conclusion that so often we judge different people by only one stereotype or only one story we have heard. If everyone would take a moment to actually listen and get to know other peoples stories they would realize just exactly every person is going through and maybe realize that the person sitting right next to you no matter, how tall, what color, how old, may be more like you than you think. Just as Adichie said, "Sterotypes are incomplete stories..." Not everyone only has a "Single Story" they have many stories that develop who they are today so no one has the right to judge.

The following is a YouTube video of a movie trailer for a movie called Freedom Writers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT0L1U-Rdj4 I believe that this movie does a very good job of showing how some students only see each other through one stereotype and gradually learn from the help of their new teacher Mrs. Gruwell that they are all going through some of the same situations and can learn from one another if they give it a chance just as Adichie describes in her speech.

Not Just a Single Story

Adichie does a wonderful job depicting several perspectives to the same event in her short story “A Private Experience.” As Adichie explains in her talk about “the danger of a single story,” there is never one way to view anything. Whether it’s a person, culture, or event, there is always a different way to look at it. In the short story, two very different women are forced together when a riot breaks out. Despite their different languages and religions, each one is able to find comfort in the other. It would have been easy for Adichie to portray only one women’s account of the experience. However, this would have encouraged readers to favor one character over the other. Had Adichie only described Chika’s experience, readers would not have understood that the riot impacted both her and the other women. Had Adichie only told the woman’s side of the story, readers would be left questioning Chika’s significance in the story. By highlighting the differences between the characters while still showing their connections to each other, readers experience multiple sides of the story. This is something that can be quite challenging but very rewarding for the author and readers. “A Private Experience” has incredible depth despite being a short story. By the end of the story the characters learn they have found solace in each other while readers conclude with a multidimensional perspective of the characters and the riot that brought them together.

http://paperbackreader2.blogspot.com/2009/07/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.html

Bias in Children's Literature

I found "The Danger of a Single Story" link extremely interesting and decided to do further research over biases in literature. Granted all people have some form of bias purely from human instinct and as she mentioned the best way to combat this bias is from reading a large range of literature. I still wondered, how much bias do we receive from literature when we are children? She mentioned that her childhood was full of stories about white children from western countries; however, I discovered that children's literature is full of other forms of bias besides race and ethnicity. A recent study was done over children's literature published from 1900 to 2000. The study found that gender bias in children's books did not improve during this time period. Males are usually the main characters in most children's books even when the character is an animal. This bias seems to continue into adulthood when a large portion of classic literature have men has the main characters.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110503151607.htm

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/new-study-finds-gender-bias-in-childrens-books/

http://www.intime.uni.edu/multiculture/curriculum/children.htm