Ground Zero
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Ground Zero
September 11, 2001 will be a day all Americans remember forever. As people visit the 911 site, a turmoil of emotions are brought forward, and Suzanne Burne uses an appeal to pathos, connotative diction, sentence fragments, and an abstract outlook on “emptiness”, throughout her story to explain her attitude towards Ground Zero.
Burne appeals to pathos throughout the entire piece as she intricately describes the desolateness of Ground Zero. She stresses the abundance of American flags, symbolizing a renewed patriotism in the United States. She puts the aftermath into perspective by adding a conversation she overheard between an elderly man and his son in which the man remembers when there were no twin towers, prior to when they were built, “an absence before there was an absence.” “I went in and ordered a Pastrami sandwich, uncomfortably aware that many people before me had come to that same deli for pastrami sandwiches who would never come again.” Burne hit home, right in the heart of her audience, when she reminds us of the lives lost that fateful day.
Throughout this piece Burne uses connotative diction. “But once your eyes adjust to what you are looking at, “nothing” becomes something much more potent, which is absence.” Absence is a strongly negative connotative word. When one thinks of absence, we think of being “alone”, or “gone”, a word that fits the Ground Zero site to a tee. “Many people had chosen to do the same that day, despite the raw wind and spits of rain” The words “raw” and “spits” hold negative connotations as well. The day was one most would not want to be outdoors, but still did in order to see the site of the fallen towers. The word selection within the passage aids in the somber tone of the piece.
Suzanne Burne uses a unique syntax sequence, using reoccurring sentence fragments. The sentence fragments broke up the fluidity of the piece in order to separate different thoughts, to allow the audience to know where one thought begins and another ends. “An elegant-looking Norwegian family in matching shearling coats. Children, middle-aged couples, older people.”
Burne consistently refers to an “emptiness” or “nothingness” all throughout the passage. The “nothingness” evolves until the concluding sentence where, “that space fills up again.” This symbolism is to portray how so many hearts were broken by this tragedy, and how much grief has been evoked, but also, in turn, how our nation has come together to create a Memorial for all the lost lives, and real heroes of the United States of America.
Ground Zero is more than just a memory of what has been, but a reminder of all that can be. Through an appeal to pathos, diction, syntax, and ambiguity, Suzanne Burne reminds