9/11 Analysis

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September 11, 2001 is a day that the entire nation remembers. People know the day as one of loss and death. The country gathered together as a collective following the events of that day. They mourned together for the deaths of the American war heroes and for the suffering of their wives and children. The children of the dead men were the focus on why the country had to enter war. Children, as the innocent beings that they are, are often used as a means for influencing social opinion and change. After the attacks of 9/11, it was not long before news and media outlets featured nothing but pregnant widowed-women. They appeared on shows like Oprah and Primetime sharing their stories about how their lives changed forever that day (Tapia, 2011). However, these women were not aware that they were being used. Out of everyone that had to live with the aftermath of 9/11, they were singled-out for one simple reason; they were pregnant. Their stories were only given importance because they were being told in relation to the men who died that day. They were labeled as wives and mothers to the men’s children. The children were used as a way to give life to the men who lost their lives that day. “‘Almost all of them assert that the memory of their husbands will be …show more content…
This was important and shrewd labeling because it made the losses of the children of these men all the more horrible. It is one thing for a custodian to leave a child fatherless, and something else entirely for a war hero to leave a child fatherless. Somehow, the life of a dead soldier’s son is more sorrowful than the life of a dead custodian’s. This serves to bring the people together under a universal patriotic sentiment in the wake of 9/11. The suffering of an innocent child is not something that can be refuted or objected