When i first read the article i got stuck on one of the paragraphs when Kumar was talking about the world trade centers. Certain lines from the essay just got stuck in my head. For instance when a writer was quoted as saying "it looked like a desperate ballet: some seemed to be flying their arms sweeping gracefully as the picked up speed." It was just so graphic with contrasting images of people falling in a really odd way. Its completely the opposite of how i saw the events and i was distracted by the writers unsensitivity to the events taking place. The inclusion of this quote made me wonder about what the author of the essay was trying to get at. Why would Kumar include this passage the sees beauty in the horrific deaths of others?"
When i went back through looking for things that interested me i found a variety of other quotes. I liked the one describing how kumar sees planes through immigrants eyes. He writes "the plane in flight represents the the journey that, when undertaken in the future, will take them to the promised land." I thought about how i see planes, and to me they are an escape from the reality of life instead of being a promised land. Then for some they are a place of work or a way to get to work.
This quote also interested me due to its connections to a quote down the same page. Kumar writes " the suicidcal cts of the hijackers also gave a perverse twist to the old story of the difficult travel to the land of plenty and promise. According to reports that were published in the days following the attacks, it was revealed that the hijackers believed that their deaths promised them entry into the garden of heaven and the ministrations of seventy virgins." They see planes as a way to get themselves into their own personal heaven, however, they also see it as the instrument of death that will carry them there.
Finally, after finishing the paper, i tried to think of what the author's meaning was. What was he trying to say? He comiserates with the immigrants, those that fall out of the planes, but in a way were we only get to know his emotions. He isn't really saying he's like them. I don't believe he has a clear cut meaning, the point of the paper seems to be a comment on the world around him, that he hears these stories and can't get them out of his head until he can pass them along to other people through the medium of the essay. He's only trying to show us a new perspective on them; his.