Journal of Student Research 2018

56 Journal Student Research already moved beyond grieving. Just nine days after the attacks, he said that “[Americans’] grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution” (Text). He then promised that America would “direct every resource at our command,” not to the recovery of its citizens, but “to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network” (Text). The message was clear: American citizens do not value extended periods of grief. Instead of allowing themselves to fully process their grief, they endeavor to quickly haul themselves up by their bootstraps, believing that they must present themselves as strong and indominable even in the face of insurmountable trauma. On a societal level, this action-oriented, quick-resolution attitude makes sense. Displaying weakness after a terrorist attack would be seen as conceding victory. Furthermore, a constant state of shock and horror is not sustainable in a national economy and--frankly--it’s not a desirable state of mind to maintain. No one wants to be scared all the time, grappling with grief and sadness, and the effects of fear can have crippling economic consequences (Schneider). At some point, whether it be out of a sense of duty or self-preservation, people find it necessary to attempt to return to their comforting routines and pursue a sense of normalcy, even it’s built on shaky foundations. Society picks itself up and trundles on. One of the ways trauma is suppressed is by repeated exposure to the same sets of images over and over until their meaning fades and their emotional effects become nondetrimental. For example, after the 9/11 terrorist attack, the footage of the twin towers collapsing was repeated so often that it was seared into Americans’ minds. While the images are unquestionably unforgettable and inescapable, their emotional impact faded with each viewing until it became difficult to see the burning towers as anything other than icons, so abstracted and appropriated that it was hard to focus on the actual lives that were lost. Columbia University Professor of English and expert in cultural memory Marianne Hirch writes that by turning traumatizing images into icons and repeating them incessantly, “they may lose their power to wound,” allowing viewers to effectively “immunize” themselves against the memory of the traumatic events (Pines 185). The scale of the 9/11 tragedy was utterly unprecedented, and the media coverage was so unrelenting that the trauma quickly became unwieldy- -too large for an individual American to process. Even for those on the ground in Manhattan who experienced the event in person, the trauma and sheer scale of the tragedy was so large that it was difficult to react with anything but numbness. In her cathartic essay, “Instructions for Surviving the Unprecedented (Break Glass in Case of Emergency, if Glass Is Not Already Broken),” New York-based author Jenefer Shute writes about the missing