Words Fail, Memory Blurs, Life Wins
The New York Times
December 31, 2001
By JOYCE CAROL OATES
RINCETON, N.J.
Since Sept. 11, what might be called the secondary wave
of the terrorist attacks has been nearly as traumatic to
some of us as the attacks themselves: our discovery that
we have been demonized and that because we are
Americans, we are hated; because we are Americans, we
are seen to be deserving of death. "Words fail us" was the
predominant cliché in the days immediately after the
attacks, but for some, even intellectuals in other secular
democracies, words have been too easily and cheaply
produced; they matter-of-factly declared, "The United
States had it coming."
The closest I've knowingly come to a "senseless" violent
death was during an airline flight from New Orleans to
Newark when turbulence so rocked, shook, rattled the
plane that it seemed the plane could not endure and
would break into pieces. White-faced attendants were
strapped into their seats, and the rest of us, wordless, very
still except for the careenings and lurchings of the plane,
sat with eyes fixed forward and hands clenched into fists.
In the earlier, less alarming stages of the turbulence, the
passenger beside me had remarked that turbulence "per
se" rarely caused plane crashes, that crashes were caused
by "mechanical failure" or bad takeoffs or landings. But
now he was silent, for we'd passed beyond even the
palliative value of words.
If I survive this, I vowed, I will never fly again. No doubt
every passenger on the flight was making a similar vow. If
- survive! - never again.
The utterly physical - visceral - adrenaline-charged -
sensation that you may be about to die is so powerful that
it invests the present tense with an extraordinary lucidity
and significance. To imagine the next stage as it has been
experienced by countless fellow human beings - when
the plane actually disintegrates, or begins to fall, or, in
the case of hijacked planes, nears the targets chosen by
"martyrs" in the holy war - is to re-experience symptoms
of anxiety that culminate in the mind simply blanking
out: as words fail us in extremis, so do coherent
sensations fail us.
We flew through the turbulence. If there was a narrative
developing here it was not to be a narrative of tragedy or
even melodrama but one that lends itself to a familiar
American subgenre, the anecdote.
As soon as such an experience - whether anecdotal or
tragic - is over, we begin the inevitable process of
"healing": that is, forgetting. We extract from the helpless
visceral sensation some measure of intellectual summary
or control. We lie to ourselves: we revise experience to
make it lighthearted and amusing to others. For in what
other way is terror to be tamed, except recycled as
anecdotes or aphorisms, a sugary coating to hide the
bitter pellet of truth within?
How many airplane flights I've taken since that day I
vowed I would never fly again, I can't begin to estimate.
Dozens, certainly. Perhaps more than 100. The promise
I'd made to myself in extremis was quickly broken, though
it was a reasonable promise and perhaps my terror-
stricken mind was functioning more practically than my
ordinary mind, uncharged by adrenaline.
Yet the fact is: Words fail us. There is the overwhelming
wish to "sum up" - "summarize" - "put into perspective."
As if typed-out words possessed such magic and could
not, instead, lead to such glib summations as "The United
States had it coming."
Admittedly, having survived that rocky airplane flight, I
could not long retain its significance in my mind, still less
in my emotions. Amnesia seeps into the crevices of our
brains, and amnesia heals. The present tense is a needle's
eye through which we thread ourselves - or are threaded
- and what's past is irremediably past, to be recollected
only in fragments. So, too, the collective American
experience of the trauma of Sept. 11 has begun already to
fade and will continue to fade, like previous collective
traumas: the shock of Pearl Harbor, the shock of President
John F. Kennedy's assassination.
The great narrative of our planet isn't human history but
the history of evolving life. Environments alter, and only
those species and individuals that alter with them can
survive.
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast" may be a
cliché, but it is also a profound insight. Perhaps unfairly,
the future doesn't belong to those who only mourn, but to
those who celebrate.
The future is ever-young, ever forgetting the gravest truths
of the past.
Ideally we should retain the intellectual knowledge that
such traumas as the terrorist attacks have given us, while
assimilating and moving beyond the rawness of the
emotional experience. In this season of unease, as ruins
continue to smolder, we celebrate the fact of our
existence, which pity, terror and visceral horror have
made more precious, at least in our American eyes.
Joyce Carol Oates, professor in humanities at Princeton, is
the author, most recently, of the novel "Middle Age: A
Romance."
nytimes.com |
