The Skyscraper and the Airplane

1. The connection between the initial quote describing the Titanic, and the essay on 9/11 is that they're both a great tragedy that had a huge imprint on American life. So they are comparing these two great tragedies because they both resulted in the death of many americans.

2. Goodheart uses the informative method to describe 9-11. He gives the history about the buildings, explains how skyscrapers came to be, and how what people think about them. In this case, it is not an effective method, however. I say this because I don't think the confusing physics of how airplanes work has any bearing on what happened, and in my opinion, he unnecessarily confuses people with this analysis of the functions of airplanes. Like who cares? It doesn't change the fact or my reaction on what happened the morning of september the 11th. A specific quote that shows what I mean by how confusing it proves to the reader: "Perhaps one person in a thousand really knows, understanding coolly why it is that the contraptian doesn't plummet back to earth under our weight." (Goodheart is describing the people's "ignorance" on how airplanes function). Another quote that is also unnecessarily confusing: "first and foremost of course was the ability to produce cheap, high quality structural steel." Again who cares?

3. 9-11 did indeed negatively affect American life, and the affects are far from over, but it affected american muslims and arabs a LOT more than say white americans. These people had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks; some fundamentalists in their homecountry did, yet they were unrightfully racially hated and discriminated against because of this. Not unlike what happened in World War 2 with the Japanese. Also, another similar example would be the Jews in Poland and Germany and how they were racially hated (and prosecuted) although most of the victims had nothing to do with the "economic issues" in eastern Germany. So in that way, Bush is today's Hitler.