The bombardment scene in The Forbidden Zone enraged me. Like actually enraged. I wanted to post about it prior to class but felt I needed to collect my thoughts and rein in my disgust before ranting all over our blog. Thanks to Morgan’s confidence-inducing and accepting-of-my-crazy pep talk, I’m throwing caution to the wind (or rather, blowing it out the this ticking time bomb I call a brain).

Mary Borden disgusted me. The narrator watched the bombardment happen and did nothing. Of course, they detailed the scene (a sick thing to do if you ask me), but they didn’t warn anyone though they saw the planes. They didn’t help of the people though they saw them running. They didn’t do anything but watch. I refuse to believe that a stunned demeanor makes up for these actions.

Transitioning to an aerial view of the destruction disgusted me even further. Never in my life have I had such a visceral and actual real physical reaction to a text. I’m talking my hands got sweaty, my face got hot, and I threw the book across the room. Okay, okay, I didn’t actually–books are sacred things, mind you–but I wanted to. I really really wanted to. The telling of the story from above gave the narrator God-like power over the destruction. And if not merely over the destruction, it gave the narrator the power to avoid it. It equated the dichotomy of power and destruction with that of the sacred and the profane.

Giving the narrator that power almost seemed like a religious stab. As though anyone believing in a God or willing to exonerate their God from allowing such a thing to happen had transitioned themselves from the sacred to the profane. Borden almost flips the meaning on the two words.

Power = proof of sacredness and sacred = profane

In class we discussed how there might not be any real evidence of religious suggestions so far in the book. I disagree. I think Borden is making clear and direct accusations regarding religion.