“On this day let us remember them, and let us recommit ourselves to do all in our power to ensure that the forces of barbarism are defeated and that the forces of progress and peace will prevail.”

Note his priorities, which are mine: remember 1)those who attacked 2) why they attacked; then 3) those who died.

Once again, the Memorial hardly stops people from asking for justice by its emphasis on the magnitude of the loss.

Once again—the Memorial is a memorial to the dead, and also a gravesite where the remains of the dead rest. The rage (similar to what you are describing with Guernica) would be engendered by the artifacts and information in the museum. How you interpret the waterfalls as calming someone’s rage at the loss of life (which is what you are implying) I really don’t know. The function of the Memorial is to honor the dead and to provide comfort to the grief-striken, and this comfort (which in this case comes from recognizing the magnitude of their sacrifice, and that attention is being paid to them, as well as respect for their final resting place) does not preclude anger at the perpetrators who brought them to their death. By emphasizing the huge scale and magnitude of the loss (all those names, including those who died on the airplanes and in the ’93 attack on the WTC), and the size of the footprint (the building that was taken away), the Memorial is not designed to soothe anger. It is designed to comfort the living and respect the dead.

Ah, yes, I think we all get that, Don Carlos.

Apparently you believe a memorial to the dead ought to include a call to retribution. By that logic, my father’s tombstone ought to bear a website address and a message encouraging passersby to donate to cancer research. That way every time I visit his grave I can be instantly reminded of what killed him and how horrible his death was. Believe me, I have no trouble remembering his death; what I need is to remember his life.

For most people (obviously not all) memorials honoring the dead are designed to comfort those left behind, not incite rage. Anger comes from viewing things like the Holocaust Museum, and in this case the museum of artifacts being constructed at Ground Zero. There will be a lot of righteous and justifiable anger upon viewing the crushed fire truck and the fragments of personal belongings that are all we have left of those killed.

I get the sense though that feeding rage is important to you, and this 9/11 monument serves as more fuel. I find it interesting that your anger toward the jihadists is spilling over onto people like me simply because we appreciate the design of something and find a purpose in it that you do not (“seething, in part at those who like it”). I’m not sure what to say to that, except that I bid you peace.

Mrs. Whatsit: I too am sorry. For every death there. But ‘all political persuasions’ of survivors have naught to do with the wanton obliterative murders of friends and kin. Murder is an outrage, which I have personally experienced. I reject the idea that we should be calmed, by the memorial, essentially, about it. Acceptance and calmness come, but via a memorial of soothing? Not for me, obviously.

Neo: Picasso’s Guernica is hardly calming. It is a statement of outrage, a cry for action.

This. Thank you, Neo. My cousin’s name is on those walls, and what this memorial is about for those who lost him is his absence. The beauty of those two reflecting absences surrounded by names and the sound of water is the space left in the voids for true reflection: for contemplation and remembrance as well as thoughts of what must come next. It’s a design of true liberty, evoking response in the hearts and minds of observers, rather than demanding it in some form pre-determined by a designer.

Rage does belong there, and make no mistake, it’s there. Fury inhabits those voids along with all the grief and love and memory and more — but there’s no need to insist on it. The void fills itself with the responses it evokes. To construct the memorial to demand certain reactions as the only proper ones would have been to use my cousin’s life and death one more time, just as the terrorists used him by killing him.

*sigh*

There is a difference between feeling anger toward evil, and finding comfort after loss. If it’s impossible for you, Don Carlos, to fathom that both emotions can exist at the same time in the same person, well, that’s just you. No need to hate the rest of us because we want a sense of comfort in the absence of loved ones even as we want retribution for that which cut short their lives. The two are not mutually exclusive.

As far as Guernica goes, the painting (I assume you’re referring to the Picasso painting) is basically a statement of the human cost of war—that is, destruction, and the suffering and death of innocents. It partakes of the same impulse as the museum. In the museum, reading about the lives of the people who died and the tributes to them, and seeing the twisted wreckage, I cannot imagine that anger at the huge human cost of the attacks (and anger at the perpetrators) would not be part of the response of most people on viewing the exhibits.