How the 9-11 plane crash changed peoples outlook on life

How the 9-11 plane crash changed people’s outlook on life

By Madeleine Anderson

I don’t think I know one person who hasn’t heard of the 9-11 plane crash. This just proves how shocking and life changing the catastrophe was. On the morning of September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and they intentionally flew two jet airliners into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. They hit between floors 93 and 99 of the North Tower. Of the 2,977 victims killed in the crash, 412 were emergency workers, this included 343 fire-fighters. Minutes after the crash the atmosphere was awful, family members were jumping off buildings, children were trapped in their rooms and the building was falling apart in the immense flames. I’m sure many of you have heard the despairing phone calls the victims left for their loved ones and realised how lucky you are to be alive and have your family beside you, and for a lot of people (including me), these phone calls and messages have changed their view on life and realised how precious life is. Many people were getting ready for the day and leaving for work forgetting to say ‘I love you’ to their parents or partner but in this busy, modern day society we all work at a very fast pace and just expect that we will live another day. A great example of heroism is Welles Crowther’s story: Just a few minutes after United Airlines flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center, Welles called his mother calmly and left a voice-mail saying “Mom, this is Welles. I want you to know that I’m ok.” Crowther was an equities trader at Sandler 0’neil and Partners on the 104th floor. After making the voice-mail, he made a move on helping people as he was a volunteer fire-fighter in his teens and to the 9-11 survivors, he was known as the ‘man in the red bandanna’. Via mic:

“Amid the smoke, chaos and debris, Crowther helped injured and disoriented office workers to safety, risking his own life in the process. Though they couldn’t see much through the haze, those he saved recalled a tall figure wearing a red bandanna to shield his lungs and mouth.” “He had come down to the 78th-floor sky lobby, an alcove in the building with express elevators meant to speed up trips to the ground floor. In what’s been described as a “strong, authoritative voice,” Crowther directed survivors to the stairway and encouraged them to help others while he carried an injured woman on his back. After bringing her 15 floors down to safety, he made his way back up to help others.”

“Everyone who can stand, stand now,” Crowther told survivors while directing them to a stairway exit. “If you can help others, do so.”

“He’s definitely my guardian angel - no ifs, ands or buts - because without him, we would be sitting there, waiting until the building came down,” survivor Ling YoungtoldCNN. Crowther is credited with saving at least a dozen people that day.

For myself and many readers, Crowther’s selflessness has inspired us to prove that in those frightful moments even though you want to escape and put yourself first, helping people is such an influential act that inspires millions to this day as we are very focused on ourselves and don’t help people as much as we need to.

Another example of heroism is Jason Thomas and Dave Karnes, two former US marines:

Thomas was dropping off his daughter to her mother in Long Island when he heard about the crash. He had his marine uniform in the back of his car and put it on straight away and drove towards the crash. He said “Someone needed help. It didn’t matter who. I didn’t even have a plan. But I have all this training as a Marine, and all I could think was, ‘my city is in need.” Around the same time, Dave Karnes was working in his office watching the attack unfold. He drove towards the crash too. Once both marines arrived at the crash, the atmosphere was gloomy and dark, it was covered in debris and ash. They began searching for survivors shouting in the atmosphere “If you can hear us, yell or tap!”. Two officers, William Jimeno and John McLoughlin were alive but seriously injured, trapped 20 feet below the surface. It took the marines 3 hours to dig for Jimeno, and another 8 to reach McLoughlin.

These two examples prove how important teamwork is and that by using your work you learnt a few years ago is still helpful and can change people’s lives!

A different example of how the 9-11 plane crash has changed people’s outlook on life is about a woman named Sybil Ramsaren and a man named Hiram Gonzalez:

Every year, Ramsaren comes to the memorial to honour her daughter named Sarah Khan, who died in the World Trade Center at the age of just 32. Ramsaren said “It was just terrible”,“it was just like yesterday.” Although the city has moved on from the attack, some people have been so affected by it that it is impossible to move on and they feel stuck in time.

This is the same feeling that Hiram Gonzalez felt as he lost his sister who was working on the 98th floor of the South Tower that day. He said, “Every time this day comes by, it’s unexplainable, the feeling of how much I miss her.” He said, fighting back tears. “I never had the chance to hug or talk to her.”

I hope this article and these stories have made you think twice about your family and how fortunate you are to have them right beside you. If you have the time and chance to help someone, do it because in someone’s eyes you are their hero.

‘In each of us, two natures are at war- the good and the evil’.

By Willow Dowd

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was a novella written in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was a work well ahead of its time, reflecting the zeitgeist of the Victorian era.

The 19th century for Britain was a period of great adjustment. There was an influx of people moving from the countryside to the cities looking for work, which led to mass overcrowding. This sudden increase in the numbers of the working classes caused discomfort for the upper classes. It led to class divisions in cities for example the West and East End of London. In Victorian Literature the theme of a criminal underworld was common, take for example, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. The Upper classes were the intended audience and the lower class were the subjects of these stories. This

created a further divide as those at the lower end of society were by association perceived as criminals.

Stevenson opposed this division between the rich and poor in society and in Jekyll and Hyde he explored the duality of both an ‘upper class’ person and a ‘lower class’ person combined in one body. The respectable, wealthy and intelligent Dr Jekyll and an evil, murderous Mr Hyde. Stevenson shone a light on an outwardly pious Victorian society, where desires and feelings were suppressed and through his use of setting in this novella he depicts the tough reality of Victorian London. In the first chapter the street that Enfield and Utterson walk down shows the juxtaposition of living conditions: ‘With its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.’ Quickly contrasted with: ‘A certain sinister block of building thrust forward… in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence.’ This mirrors the strange reality of the respectable and disreputable existing in close proximity.

This way that Stevenson describes London foreshadows the duality of his main character. In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. Many people saw the introduction of ‘evolution’ as an attack on their religious beliefs because it questioned the words of the Bible. Darwin’s main theory was that humans had evolved from primitive forms. In Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson describes Mr Hyde as an ‘ape-like creature’. He is drawing on Darwin’s theories to reveal a primitive nature inside us all. By linking to The Origin of Species perhaps Stevenson was questioning religious beliefs in order to affect his readers.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to some readers might just be seen as a classic detective story. The novella includes everything a mystery should, a big question - who is Mr Hyde? A detective like figure, Mr Utterson (‘If he be Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr Seek’) and plenty of suspense. However, it did not receive acclamation because of this, but because of Stevenson’s exploration of psychology, thus causing a huge stir, selling over 40’000 copies within six months of publication.

Stevenson’s work closely resembles the later work of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud split the human mind into three basic sections, the Id, Ego and Superego. The Id controls humans’ basic instincts, needs and desires such as hunger or sexual drive. It is operated by the principle of pleasure, meaning that every impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences. The Ego revolves around the aspect of desire and fulfilment and finally the Superego controls the combination of the Id and Ego through moral ethics. Freud’s model of the human psyche helps us to understand the relationship between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson’s character has the Id and Ego but lacks the Superego, which leads to the instincts of freedom and temptation engulfing Jekyll’s personality. Theodore Dalrymple an English cultural critic and psychiatrist asserts the idea that if a person practices evil, they will become evil because character is habit. This can be seen in the book when Mr Hyde consumes Dr Jekyll, resulting in the death of them both.

This idea shook Victorian society because it suggested that every person was hiding their inner Hyde. Jekyll represents the mental mask which conceals the inner sins, ‘the Hydes’.

The beauty of this book is that 135 years after its publication, through the craftsmanship of Stevenson’s writing, readers do more than enjoy a good mystery – they are left to ponder at length on their own inner Jekyll and Hyde.

Pride, Prejudice & Pandemics

HOW THE CURRENT SITUATION HAS AFFECTED THE POPULARITY OF PERIOD PIECES.

By Isabel Clarke

Ihave always had a fondness for curling up in a chair and reading for hours on end. For many, myself included, books are a form of escapism – each provides an entirely different reality which enthrals one in its pages. One becomes entangled in the adventure, the intrigue, the story: this new fantasy a stark contrast to the mundaneness of ordinary life. Last year, however, has been far from ordinary.

2020 will of course go down in history, and not for the right reasons. We experienced flooding, bushfires, and most memorably, the global corona-virus pandemic (to name only some of the calamities of the past year). However, while on the surface the current pandemic has caused chaos and great upheaval, in reality the vast majority of us have been granted time – time to reflect, or perhaps to daydream. I recently came across a tweet that I found rather amusing; it stated that life at present was not dissimilar from life back in the regency period, especially when it comes to relationships – people stand 2 metres apart, cannot touch each other, and constantly enquire as to whether the other’s family is in good health. Furthermore, for many daily walks with non-household members, or going to the shops is the only form of social interaction they can have, aside from letters (or rather texts and emails nowadays). This same separation would’ve undoubtedly been faced by Jane Austen herself; at Chawton House, her brother’s estate, it was a good half-an-hour walk from the closest market, so isolation was apparent. The sensation of feeling both trapped and surrounded by familial friction is also a prevalent element

Photo: JASNA.org in Austen’s work – and is something that many of us can relate to now especially when, as for many of her protagonists, walks are often the most liberating thing on offer.

But, one may ask, what do these similarities have to do with us?

To answer, let us take a look at the new hit series, Bridgerton, which has already been watched by 63 million households according to Netflix. Its cultural significance is apparent; searches for corsets have increased by more than 100% since the series aired on Christmas Day. New data from eBay shows that 39% more of us are in the market for a vintage piece inspired by the Regency-era too. The series has spawned its own niche fashion trend – ‘Regencycore’, which encompasses all manner of ruffles, empire lines, elbow-length gloves and pearl-encrusted headbands. People have embraced its clichés, but also the modern take on the traditional genre, seen with its ‘colour conscious casting’ and seemingly more scandalous

The first season of Netflix’s Bridgerton aligns with the first book in the series, The Duke and I, which follows the story of the eldest Bridgerton daughter, Daphne, and Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings. Photo: Netflix

nature. Others have also found amusement during these times, through fantasising about being the ‘diamond of the season’. Through this, one can see the romanticisation of lockdown life, potentially as a coping mechanism; there is a certain joy that can be found in taking the positive aspects and similarities between now and two-hundred years ago, and idealising an otherwise turbulent time.

Of course, when it comes to period dramas, Bridgerton is not especially ground-breaking – other series have seen just as much success, such as Downton Abbey, which is still to date the