Wednesday, November 6, 2019
11
E.B. White's Prophetic 1948 Essay That Anticipated 9/11 In the first paragraph, drawn from the opening of Here Is New York, E.B. White approaches the city through a simple pattern of classification. In the next two paragraphs, taken from the end of the essay, White hauntingly anticipates the terror that would visit the city more than 50 years later. Notice Whites habit of putting keywords in the most emphatic spot in a sentence: the very end. This is an excerpt from Whites piece on New York first published in 1948.à Here Is New York also appears in Essays of E.B. White (1977). Here Is New York There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter - the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities, the greatest is the last - the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New Yorkââ¬â¢s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. Whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference. Each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, and each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions. All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York, the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm. Selected Works by E.B. White Every Day Is Saturday, essays (1934)Quu Vadimus? or, The Case for the Bicycle, à essays and stories (1939)One Mans Meat, essays (1944)Stuart Little, childrens fiction (1945)Charlottes Web, childrens fiction (1952)The Second Tree From the Corner, à essays and stories (1954)The Elements of Style, à by William Strunk (1959)Essays of E.B. White (1977)Writings From The New Yorker, essays (1990) 11 On the morning of September 11th, 2001, four Boeing passenger jets were hijacked within an hour by nineteen Arab terrorists armed with box cutters. Pilots among these terrorists took control of the commercial planes and changed course towards targets in New York City and Washington D.C. Two of the planes were deliberately crashed into the nations political and financial centers, causing fires within the towers, which melted the steel support structures, thereby causing the buildings to collapse completely. A third airplane was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon. Passengers on the fourth plane overpowered the hijackers and caused the airplane to crash in Pennsylvania. This was an attack on America planned and directed by Osama Bin Laden as the leader of Al-Qaeda, a previously obscure anti-U.S. international terrorist organization composed of mainly Arabs. This horrible tragedy crippled the airline industry and shook Americaââ¬â¢s sense of security. After this horrible attack A mericans suffered not only physically but psychologically also. Because of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans were affected in five key ways, which in turn will affect American society in the way it responds, reacts, and recovers. The first way that Americans were affected by the 9/11 attacks was the role that the media played by showing detailed coverage to American citizens. This caused Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in some Americans that watched the terrible acts unfold. Jennifer Ahern and Sandro Galea, wrote that ââ¬Å"Exposure to graphic television images may exacerbate psychological symptoms in disaster situations. We tested the hypothesis that more frequent viewing of television images of the September 11 terrorist attacks was associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, and that direct exposure to disaster events had a interactive effect with media viewing (1). We recruited 1,008 adults of the borough of Manhattan of... 11 Free Essays on 9/11 On the morning of September 11th, 2001, four Boeing passenger jets were hijacked within an hour by nineteen Arab terrorists armed with box cutters. Pilots among these terrorists took control of the commercial planes and changed course towards targets in New York City and Washington D.C. Two of the planes were deliberately crashed into the nations political and financial centers, causing fires within the towers, which melted the steel support structures, thereby causing the buildings to collapse completely. A third airplane was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon. Passengers on the fourth plane overpowered the hijackers and caused the airplane to crash in Pennsylvania. This was an attack on America planned and directed by Osama Bin Laden as the leader of Al-Qaeda, a previously obscure anti-U.S. international terrorist organization composed of mainly Arabs. This horrible tragedy crippled the airline industry and shook Americaââ¬â¢s sense of security. After this horrible attack A mericans suffered not only physically but psychologically also. Because of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans were affected in five key ways, which in turn will affect American society in the way it responds, reacts, and recovers. The first way that Americans were affected by the 9/11 attacks was the role that the media played by showing detailed coverage to American citizens. This caused Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in some Americans that watched the terrible acts unfold. Jennifer Ahern and Sandro Galea, wrote that ââ¬Å"Exposure to graphic television images may exacerbate psychological symptoms in disaster situations. We tested the hypothesis that more frequent viewing of television images of the September 11 terrorist attacks was associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, and that direct exposure to disaster events had a interactive effect with media viewing (1). We recruited 1,008 adults of the borough of Manhattan of...
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