Julia Penczak
English 396
Professor Rojas
March 2, 2018
Thoreau Think Piece
When I was reading Thoreau’s “The Shipwreck” chapter, I couldn’t help but notice how much he desensitized the deaths of the emigrants. The text and the discussion we had in class about mass shootings made me think about the similarities and differences between the two, since both resulted in mass deaths of innocent people.
One of the main differences I think between the two situations, though I have never been close to someone who has died in one of these situations so my opinions are then slightly biased and somewhat ignorant to a degree, but I think the main difference is that one is a natural occurrence and the other is a man made occurrence. I think this would affect someone involved in the situation differently. In a natural disaster, there is nowhere to put the anger and blame on, because the murders were unpreventable and came from nature. This I imagine, might make it hard for either a survivor or someone who lost someone close to them because of the natural disaster, because there is a sense of “Why did this have to happen?” In relation to something like a school shooting, the anger shifts to “Why did this person have to do this? Why aren’t there stricter laws trying to prevent these occurrences?” I imagine that both situations create anger in victims, but from two different standpoints and I cannot say which is “worse” for both result in mass deaths and immense grief.
What struck me in Thoreau’s text was just how desensitized he seemed to be about the deaths, as well as some of the people he mentioned in the text being desensitized. Thoreau wrote vividly describing the scene of the deaths, and mentioned how “this shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of society.” He also stated that there was a man picking up sea weed off the shore, who was more concerned with that and his barnyard than the loss of life. Thoreau went so far as to say that the bodies had “no friends but the worms or fishes.” This really shocked and unsettled me, because I understand that it was an unpreventable occurrence and that those who died are now going to “Heaven” in his eyes, but that doesn’t take away from the pain of loss. Thoreau’s words reminded me of many I have seen passed around the media, from random people on social media accounts to celebrities and politicians as well. People are so desensitized to mass death and to death alone that it is frightening. Thoreau talking about how the shipwreck didn’t make a visible vibration in society was such a strong deja-vu moment for me because I feel as though with the recent shootings, there will be a tiny vibration in society as everyone learns about what happened on the news, but then ultimately, these things are forgotten about. There will be talk of the need for gun reform and more attention to mental health, but in a few weeks the conversations fade until the next shooting. Then, it’s “thoughts and prayers, we must change something, this has to end” but it never does. It saddens me that now when I hear of shootings happening in America, I am not filled with the same shock anymore. I immediately think “Where was it this time?” There is no more “How could this have happened” because I know how this happened. This has become such a frequent occurrence, maybe not to the extent of shipwrecks, but even though mass shootings are man made and storms, earthquakes, eruptions, etc., are not, the shootings are so common that we have become desensitized to those in a similar way to Thoreau in this text.
I read a tweet about how the mass shootings are a result of legal abortion, and God is punishing us for killing babies so now he is killing older children and adults to get back at us. It made me sad to see such ignorance and while I believe anyone is entitled to their own beliefs and opinions, I think that desensitizing death and relating it back to religion as the person who tweeted this did, and as Thoreau did in this text, is an ignorant and selfish thing to do.
