Poetic license, continued Is The 9/11 Commission Report the first American epic?

Taking this liberty, the commission pursued its mandate in an unconventional, yet quintessentially American manner, opening the way for the Report to engage in national storytelling. The Report speaks on behalf of the American people, represented by the evenly bipartisan 9/11 Commission. It addresses Americans as a single community of free individuals and calls on them to strengthen themselves through unity amid ongoing national debate. Official manifestoes of this kind tend to avoid poetic rhetoric, and certainly The 9/11 Commission Report is no "poem" in the traditional epic sense. But at 567 pages — the commission staff analyzed some 2.5 million documents and interviewed roughly 1200 people — it is undeniably a long narrative work. In oral cultures, poetic devices such as rhyme, meter, and alliteration aided memorization of lengthy works. In our culture, however, the epic voice is relatively prosaic. The 9/11 Report, if subtly poetic on occasion, speaks in the flatter, plain-talk, fact-seeking accent of the American democratic voice:

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States. Millions of men and women readied themselves for work. Some made their way to the Twin Towers, the signature structures of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Others went to Arlington, Virginia, to the Pentagon. Across the Potomac River, the United States Congress was back in session. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, people began to line up for a White House tour. In Sarasota, Florida, President George W. Bush went for an early morning run.

For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey. Among the travelers were Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari, who arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine.

Like traditional epics, the Report recalls age-old beliefs, motifs, and narrative formulae. We hear in it echoes of the early Protestant sermon, which typically included a lament, an acknowledgement of sinful behavior, hopes of redemption, and a vision of an earthly City of God. This is the burden of Michael Wigglesworth’s The Day of Doom (1662), a bestseller in 17th-century New England. Its opening lines, "Still was the night, Serene and Bright, / when all Men sleeping lay; / Calm was the season, and carnal reason / thought so ’twould last for ay," are followed by a description of a sinful people engulfed in the horrors of Judgment Day. The 9/11 Report presents a comparable scenario. Millions of Americans are heading off to work when terror strikes. And the wheels of government are turning noiselessly when the minions of Hell crash into Eden. Disaster. But people endure the malicious attack, and the Report affirms the resourcefulness and steadfastness of both the victims and the survivors.

The September assault on an unsuspecting America repeats a theme as old as Homer: the enemy infiltrates and causes great destruction. Wily Greek warriors trick their Trojan adversaries by hiding inside a hollow wooden horse that the Trojans triumphantly drag into their citadel. Once inside, Greeks emerge from the horse to surprise the Trojans and sack Troy. In The 9/11 Report, no less cunning terrorists enter in the hollows of American jet airliners. Like the Trojans, Americans welcome the vehicles about to destroy them. The cheerful national disposition is captured in the hospitable phrasing of the weather predictions, which "could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey." Further into the Report, employees of certain US governmental agencies revive another Trojan voice, Cassandra’s. She was the clairvoyant princess of Troy whose strident warnings about the Trojan Horse went tragically unheeded.

Beowulf offers an Old English epic model of enemy infiltration equally applicable to The 9/11 Commission Report. Like the America depicted in the gleaming sunrise of September 11, the sky-scraping medieval citadel of Heorot, built and named by the Danish king Hrothgar, initially presents an idyll of political serenity and social ease:

And soon it stood there,

finished and ready, in full view,

the hall of halls. Heorot was the name

he had settled on it....

The hall towered,

its gables wide and high....

So times were pleasant for the people there

until finally one, a fiend out of hell,

began to work his evil in the world.

Grendel was the name of this grim demon....

he had dwelt for a time

in misery among the banished monsters....

Then as dawn brightened and the day broke

Grendel’s powers of destruction were plain. **

Out of the blue comes diabolical Grendel. Like America’s terrorists, he is a dangerous operator, grudge-holding and destructive, excluded from the splendors within Heorot’s towering hall. Like the Twin Towers, Heorot proves too lofty and too visible for its own good: it spawns brutish envy and unsettles cosmic balances. The unprepared people of Heorot and their hapless leader Hrothgar are at first overwhelmed by their attacker, until Beowulf arrives with his men to defeat the monster, restore peace to Heorot, and strengthen Hrothgar’s leadership.

The Report presents America’s attackers as an alarmingly new enemy, a hybrid of the very different kinds of foes to be found in Homeric epic and Beowulf. Al Qaeda operatives follow a discernable (even if decentralized) chain of command, plan actions in advance, and execute an ingenious ruse. To a degree, they are a "worthy adversary," akin to the Greek army that fittingly opposed the Trojan forces in warfare. Their actions call for counterattack, and in Part 10, "Wartime," the Report describes US military campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But terrorists are also portrayed as descendants of Grendel, a primeval malevolence that rises up from the shadows cast by soaring abundance to flatten perceived imbalances. In Part Two, "The Foundation of the New Terrorism," Al Qaeda’s motivations are expounded: "It is the story of eccentric and violent ideas sprouting in the fertile ground of political and social turmoil." Bin Laden is quoted: "It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind." His unrelenting intention to attack what he calls the "far enemy," America, is characterized as a byproduct of disproportionate US influence in the Middle East, and the poverty that makes predominantly Muslim countries vulnerable to radical Islam.