Talk of the Town

John Updike and Susan Sontag shared contrasting views about the aftermath of 9/11 in their essays "Talk of the Town"

John Updike's view was more of the optimistic sort. He writes about how him and his wife actually witnessed the towers falling from afar. He describes what it looked like from his point of view and uses words like 'tinkling', 'glittering', and 'pristine'. I thought how could you ever describe the twin towers falling with such fluffy words? That's because the twin towers were one of New York's most beautiful attributes. In a flash, they dropped like elevators and beautiful New York went from 'tinkling' to a 'tinkling shiver'.

The next paragraph uses the phrases 'remarkably calm and loving', 'blase blitheness', and 'planeful of peaceful passengers'. The overall voice in the text is actually quite positive. Many people knew they were about to die, and you're going to tell me that they were 'remarkably calm and loving' right before they died? I would be completely freaking out if I knew I was about to die. There would be absolutely nothing calm about me. Of course, many people have different attitudes when they are put in near death situations. For example: there were musicians playing on the Titanic before it sank. When they found out that they were all going to sink and die, they didn't stop playing. I guess when you think about it, would you rather spend your last moments of life freaking out about how you were going to die, or playing beautiful music on the violin. I mean, it sucks that you have to die, but I would have to pick the latter. Anyways, these were Updike's perception of what the passengers of that plane felt. I guarantee you there were at least a couple of people who were freaking out.

This essay ends with 'New York looked glorious.' --quite an interesting way to describe a place that just got attacked leaving millions of victims bodies laying everywhere. I believe the writer was trying to get across how America is triumphant. These terrorists thought they could break us by doing something so terrible but they can't.

Susan Sontag's writing was refuting Updike's point. She believes that America needs to stop saying that they're strong, resilient, and not affected by these attacks. Terrorists should NOT be thought of as cowards because they were willing to die themselves in order to kill others. Hold up, I gotta be honest... I do think that's what makes them cowards. Let's just kill people for fun--YAY. What happened to the peace, yo? This essay had an overall negative vibe and I didn't care for it. I don't get much into politics, but my gut feeling tells me that I just don't agree with this woman's opinion. What's wrong with saying our country is strong? We may not be strong, but we can at least have the attitude that we are. It's like the little engine that could. "I think I can, I think I can." What happened to him--he made it over that hill (At least I think that's how the story went.) A positive attitude is one of the only things we individually have control of anymore. America--we can do it!