The Memorials

There was nothing comforting about looking into those two huge pits at the 9/11 memorial with the water flowing nonstop and disappearing into an endless black hole. The feeling that I got from staring into that hole, was a feeling of hopelessness. To me, that giant hole was symbolic in that sense that it represented all of the lives lost and how those innocent people died for no reason and inevitably fell into a “dark hole” that they would never be able to escape.
Another reason why I felt a feeling of hopelessness was because the overwhelming amount of names there were written around the memorial. As I stood in front of the fountains, I just kept reading as many names as I could and I couldn’t help but wonder if that person was a mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, or child. This depressed me because I wanted to know more about these people who passed away. I felt as if the memorial was trying to tell me that there was no point in even trying to find out who they were because they are gone, they fell into that black hole in which they would never escape.
The Vietnam Memorial gave me a little bit of a different feeling. I wasn’t disappointed in the memorial and I wasn’t in awe of it. I think that I possibly felt that way because I am obviously detached from the Vietnam War since I was no alive when it was taking place, but rather I feel a deeper connection to the collapse of the Twin Towers because I remember every detail of that day. But, I did like the memorial because I felt like it was very personal. The letters and words and quotes written on the wall were very touching and it showed me that these people that fought and died in the war were just regular people who were living every day lives until they suddenly had to fight. The letter that caught my eye the most was the one in which a son was writing to his father and telling his father to apologize to his mother for him and that he just had to go fight and that it was very sudden. This really hit home hard.
In all, I really enjoyed going to the memorial as a class. I loved hearing what my friend’s interpretations of the memorials were because I find that the goal of the memorials are to let people find their own meanings.