Dear Reader Letter

Dear Reader,

Throughout the course of this project, I delved into the metaphor of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, within the novel I read, The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta. This project cured me of being fainthearted. The content of the novel is heavy, and paired with the fragility and bleakness of recalling an event I can barely recall did not make for an easy path.

The golden thread I attempted (and hopefully accomplished) to establish throughout my multigenre research project was that of the fragments and what's left behind after a cataclysmic and widespread event. My expository essay explores the extended metaphor between 9/11 and the Departure throughout The Leftovers. I compared and contrasted the two, reaching across the scope of their factors including religion, politics, effects, and the emotional state of those left behind. The golden thread derives the most from what is left behind, since I believe that is the most integral commonality between September 11th and the Departure that Perrotta highlights.

With my community board, I cut pieces out of, burned, and tagged the missing posters that I created to represent Perrotta's world of the Departure and the actual examples of 9/11 missing posters. The destroyed aspect of the posters is representative of the broken parts of those left behind that they will never get back, and that is what they have to live with.

In my presidential address, I lingered in Perrotta's world after studying former president George W. Bush's response to September 11th, John F. Kennedy's address during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's declaration of war after Pearl Harbor. While all three did try to rouse the support of the nation, a facet I did include in my nameless President's address, there was a certain lack of personal connection to the audience. They spoke solely as the leaders of the nation and not as a citizen of humanity. With my fictitious president, I tried to have him reach out and connect to his audience by making him a Leftover as well, losing his children.

The prayer piece from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old girl regretting her final encounter with her first responder father on 9/11 captures the weight of things left said and unsaid, as well as a general lack of faith in God above that is applicable to both the Departure and 9/11. The girl is "broken" and "missing" without her father, the most reliable figure in her life, and that again envelops the gaping hole that is not able to be filled, even with time and healing.

In my final genre, the first edition of a study created by the bipartisan research group responsible for determining the cause of the Departure, I recreated the types of categories and questions I believe scientists would need to draw any conclusion about the nature of the Departure. They range from religion to health to political views. It is a representation of trying to put the pieces together to explain the inexplicable, the effort of humanity to comfort and assure those who remain of their own morality and safety should an event like that occur again.

I learned so much that I didn't before, and actually did have fun doing this project. It is a lot to deal with, but the illumination and connection to events I found interesting made it 100% worthwhile.

Sincerely,

Emily Mattson