One moment they're all collapsed together post-battle, we have an inkling that maybe understanding and relations will improve, then back to business as usual.
Sort of like real life.
That actually reminds me of an article I read years ago, a "one year later" follow-up piece on the first World Trade Center bombing. An interviewed person was saying how right after the bombing & evacuation lots of people who worked there were saying how they were going to keep in touch, how this experience was going to change their lives, how they were going to all have this bond because of their shared trauma, and all that sort of stuff - but how all that pretty much faded in a few weeks as things got back to normal.
Fact is, most traumatic events don't change most people's lives as much as you think they would.
And to some extent, that's good - you're more likely to get post-traumatic stress disorder as a long-term effect from trauma than you are to get lifelong friends.
Still, that doesn't mean that we want to read about it! Epilogues are generally about making with the warm fuzzies, after all.
you're more likely to get post-traumatic stress disorder as a long-term effect from trauma than you are to get lifelong friends.
Unfortunately far too true
Epilogues are generally about making with the warm fuzzies
I dunno, I always feel kind of cheated when I read a book or watch a movie that has a certain negative dramatic mood to it, and at the very end they tack on a happy ending; IMHO sort of trivializes everything that came before it in most cases.
dunno, living in New Orleans two years post-katrina, it's still omnipresent in an everyday kind of sense. Probably simply because this city was so completely and royally F'd up. After 9/11, there was nothing tying people together anymore; I mean, their workplace and all kind of wasn't around any more. Y'gotta have a forum.
We still talk about Katrina and its effect on us (in the collective and more individual senses) on a daily basis. 9/11 was more about fear, politics, and symbolism than about actually changing infrastructure and the patterns of people's lives. When your house is destroyed and you lose your job and you have to spend a year or two or more in a completely different city, trying to make your way back home, that stays with you in a different and deeper way than simply a change in your skyline.
Re: post-KatrinaaintesduckJuly 26 2007, 02:16:08 UTC
Well, that's sort of different, because in your case you didn't have an opportunity to go back to normal; "normal" as you knew it just wasn't physically there anymore (and may I say in sympathy, that must really really suck).
I was actually using the first time they bombed the World Trade Center as an example, the time they didn't manage to do significant damage. There are a few people I know who were affected in a way similar to you (but less dramatically) after the larger 9/11 attack, because this time their jobs were gone, and the opportunity to get similar jobs wasn't there as the local economy crashed, so they had no choice but to change their lives; for them, also, there was no opportunity to go back to "normal
( ... )
Sort of like real life.
That actually reminds me of an article I read years ago, a "one year later" follow-up piece on the first World Trade Center bombing. An interviewed person was saying how right after the bombing & evacuation lots of people who worked there were saying how they were going to keep in touch, how this experience was going to change their lives, how they were going to all have this bond because of their shared trauma, and all that sort of stuff - but how all that pretty much faded in a few weeks as things got back to normal.
Fact is, most traumatic events don't change most people's lives as much as you think they would.
Reply
Still, that doesn't mean that we want to read about it! Epilogues are generally about making with the warm fuzzies, after all.
Reply
Unfortunately far too true
Epilogues are generally about making with the warm fuzzies
I dunno, I always feel kind of cheated when I read a book or watch a movie that has a certain negative dramatic mood to it, and at the very end they tack on a happy ending; IMHO sort of trivializes everything that came before it in most cases.
Reply
Reply
We still talk about Katrina and its effect on us (in the collective and more individual senses) on a daily basis. 9/11 was more about fear, politics, and symbolism than about actually changing infrastructure and the patterns of people's lives. When your house is destroyed and you lose your job and you have to spend a year or two or more in a completely different city, trying to make your way back home, that stays with you in a different and deeper way than simply a change in your skyline.
Reply
I was actually using the first time they bombed the World Trade Center as an example, the time they didn't manage to do significant damage. There are a few people I know who were affected in a way similar to you (but less dramatically) after the larger 9/11 attack, because this time their jobs were gone, and the opportunity to get similar jobs wasn't there as the local economy crashed, so they had no choice but to change their lives; for them, also, there was no opportunity to go back to "normal ( ... )
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