Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier

Most Popular posts from other blogs...

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier

The memorial symbol that emerged after that war expresses this perfectly: the tomb of the unknown soldier. Nothing like it had ever existed. It spread throughout the world, there are now dozens, on all sides of all wars. It doesn’t recall a Nelson, Washington or Brock. The unknown soldier didn’t lead or decide. He simply died. I remember philosopher Hannah Arendt marvelling at the image, as if amazed at the ability to create something totally new in the long history of war. She was a German 14-year-old in 1920, when the first tombs were erected.

Poppies are a great symbol, too. They’re drawn from In Flanders Field, a poem by a Canadian doctor in that war. But they can seem diminished by the way politicians and news anchors sometimes wear them with an air of self-congratulation. You can’t diminish the unknown soldier. A politician who tried to exploit the tomb would be diminished by it, not vice versa.

The highway of heroes is touching, but evanescent. Perhaps it’s just that the Afghanistan war still stretches on and the deaths are too recent to evolve into symbols. A young Canadian died there just two weeks ago.

The tale of the 9/11 memorial on the World Trade Center site is especially unilluminating. There were raw conflicts over design, construction, input and money. U.S. journalist Amy Waldman wrote a novel based on it, The Submission, which feels dull and predictable compared with actual events that occurred, like the uproar over building a Muslim centre near the site.

There have also been efforts to turn remnants from the site into memorial symbols — like a charred beam which, some people claim, resembles a cross. Atheists objected to including it in the 9/11 museum.