Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Reading Shakespeare in Kandahar
Foreign Policy: "Thank you for coming," Prof. David Kastan told the half-full auditorium. "You did not have to be here this morning. I did. It means the world to me that you came." I looked around at my fellow classmates; we were all tired and dazed. The night before, the acrid, unforgettable smell of melted steel, atomized concrete, and human remains had drifted seven miles north, from southern Manhattan up to Columbia University's campus.
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There were several things that caught my attention as I was flipping through the blogs. 9/11 was a horrible tragedy, and left its mark on New York and the US in a fairly powerful way. The writer quoted the Shakespeare play, Titus Andronicus, and says, "Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,/Blood and revenge are hammering in my head". I think that embodies the sentiments of Americans after the attack. I was far too young to understand the magnitude of what had happened or that my father worked near those buildings. The last major attack that occurred this close was Pearl Harbor. That was a completely different generation and here we are, the new generations confronted with an attack and unsure of where we stand. We could only look back in history to understand what to do. Shakespeare was right, he knew mankind, he understood human nature and the twisted ways we live. It is amazing how closely the feelings in that play matched to the way 9/11 left us feeling.
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