Summary

My first project is focused on the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. It intertwines Art, History, and English to get the full package of 9/11. This project looks more at the personal stories from that day. From survivors to firefighters, you can put yourself in the shoes of the people in the buildings. 

Art

For the Art portion of my projected I decided to create a painting as if I was inside the Twin Towers. Through the neutral colors and abstraction, you can find yourself struggling to see the blurred out exit sign through the thick smoke. 

English

The English portion of my project was based off movies that had 9/11 influenced into them. I took the movies, Remember Me and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and compared and contrasted them. I compared the common emotion of fear and sadness that they both brought and contrasted the differences between characters and the reaction of characters. I focused on the end of Remember Me and a scene towards the middle of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Both of these movies as a whole are extremely different. While, Remember Me only has a brief scene of 9/11, it almost portrays the day in a strong way. You see a small moment of the pain during the day, but then it is an instant high point and you see how the people overcome the tragedy that occurred. Contrasting to the way Remember Me is, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has the whole movie dedicated to the hardships that came with 9/11. You see a child and also a wife struggle to understand and cope with the loss of a loved one. You see their ups and downs and has they grow as a person. This also contrasts with Remember Me because you really see the emotion and the low points that people have while dealing with what happened. Both movies give a strong message of how better things can come from a tragedy and how you can pick yourself up after a low point. These movies take view from two different perspectives, a main character dying and a main character dealing with the death of someone else. Overall, these movies were very different, but had the same deep meaning.

History

​Montage from Inside the Towers

"Get out of the building! Get out of the building!" Lieutenant Gregg Hanssan, part of Engine 24, heard on his radio. The radios that we were using didn't work well in skyscrapers so some people heard nothing. This building wasn't hard to get out of, but being on the thirty-fifth floor with it collapsing made this almost impossible. Outside of the building, Tony, firefighter for Engine 207, was observing and looked up and saw two people holding hands, falling out of the top stories of the building. It was like some people just stepped out as if they were walking onto a cloud and then they didn't. "I remember leading my team down the steps and running into an exhausted man and I just stop. "Grab his legs, we have his arms and let's just drag him down the stairs." Hassan said during an interview with National Geographic. Louie Cacchiolo came storming down the stairs of the South building and ran into people screaming and running around. He grabbed someone and told them to come with him. "Panic. Commotion." he says describing the whole experience of getting out of the building. Bobby Senn, firefighter for Engine 207, looked at a man laying in the street, "He had a brown jacket on and brown curly hair. Everything that was inside of him was now outside. You don't just experience that and have it go away. It never goes away." As his men and him were walking down the street next to the buildings, he heard a whistling noise, as if a bomb was coming down. He looked up to see a body flying by. "Just the foot of the body caught onto him and Danny flew back crashing into a Volkswagen", Tony explains. The Volkswagen exploded and everyone got down. "We were laying there in all this gross stuff and I looked over screaming Danny. Danny can't die. He was captain of the football team, planned all the firehouse parties. He just couldn't die," he stated. Inside the building, Cacchioli arrived at the bottom of the steps. He pulled on the door and it wouldn't budge. There was so much panic behind him. "These big men kept pulling at the door and it moved to a wedge about this big," he said as he held up his hands showing the width of the space they had. They saw the lobby and the light coming from it and everyone started to calm down. "There was hope because there was light," he states. Bobby Senn stands outside looking at the sky, "In the midst of this hell, it was peaceful. It was quiet and serene. Papers were coming down and floating".


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