After reading "That Only A Mother", it really made me think about how I would react in a situation where my spouse had gone.. well you can't really call her crazy.. But surely there was something psychologically wrong with her. After being exposed to radiation, there were many children born with deformities. The reading tells you there was something obviously wrong when Margaret only mentions the baby's facial features and nothing more. Then it adds on when she says that her 10 month old baby was having full blown conversations with her and she didn't see any more to it. Maggie's husband, Hank, never got to see the baby until he came home 10 months later. When Maggie told the baby to crawl for her dad, she told her mom to put her on her stomach. That's when Hank became suspicious. The baby then started to squirm and Hank laughed because he thought she had her arms stuck and couldn't get them out of her sleeves. That's when he realizes the baby was missing, not only her arms, but her legs as well. Whether Maggie knew all along or she didn't realize it, it was pretty odd no one decided to contact this to her husband.
As for "We See Things Differently", I didn't really understand why Charlie, or Sayyid or whatever his name was (apparently none of those names were his real name), did what he did. We all know how other countries see America. Let's face it.. we're pretty hated around the world. "This was the jahiliyah- the land of ignorance. This was America. The Great Satan, The Arsenal of Imperialism, the Bankroller of Zionism, the Bation of Neo-Colonialism.." Everyone has something amusing to say about us Americans.
Charlie did what he did I'm assuming because he thought it was the right thing to do for his people and his religion as he goes into depths more towards the end when he is trying to explain why it was important about what he had done to Boston, yeah it is a little hard to understand but we our actually looking through an Arabs eyes and how their mentality is towards us Americans in the story and there is a lot of hatred there as we see now in days as well.
ReplyDeleteI believe Charlie was enlisted by the Islamic Caliphate to assassinate the next great threat from the west. Boston was gaining much momentum as a political figurehead and was rapidly becoming a danger to the east's traditional values. Although I believe that Charlie was an actual fan of Boston's, in the end he did what was asked of him by his God and his government.
ReplyDeleteI think it was really interesting the point you made about how there was something wrong with the baby when she only metioned her facial features. I didn't think of that before but now it totally makes sense! I think it may be possible that the telegram where she wrote "Well if the nurse is telling you that she's lying!", that may have indicated that the nurse said something about the babies deformities. But I agree with you, it's strange that Hank had absolutely NO idea before he came home, that seemed a little impossible to me if thinking about a real life situation.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even think about the fact that she never mentions anything more than her facial features in the letters. You're right, there must be something psychologically wrong with her. There was one part where she said she was so focused on her being amazing at talking and singing that she completely forgot that she can't even walk yet. If she went that whole time and couldn't figure out there's any wrong with the baby, there's something definitely wrong with her mentally.
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