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Elegy For My City

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Expressing the trauma people go through when experiencing a natural disaster, is difficult. The rebuilding of a broken city and coping is a whole other story. These are topics in Richard Ford’s essay on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: “Elegy for My City”. Recalling his old memories from back when he lived in the city, he has a whole other view of his earlier home.
In the essay, Ford describes how a journalist calls him with a request. “Tell me what you feel, a woman in Los Angeles said to me today by telephone. […] when you think of New Orleans. There must be special things you feel the loss of. Memories. And I realised, by her voice, that she had made a firm decision already about this loss. Oh, yes, I said, though not always the memories …show more content…

But, no. It's not like anything. It's what it is. That's the hard part. He, with all of us, lacked the words.” Ford wants to explain that the disaster is without comparison. It cannot be compared to 9/11 nor Hiro-shima. Natural disasters do not happen often, and when they do, people do not have a handbook or basic knowledge on how to handle their losses. Ford does give his readers some hope to lash onto in his epilogue despite the difficult occurrence. “Something will be there when the flood recedes. We know that. It will be those people now […] many black, many poor. Homeless. Overlooked. And it will be New Orleans - though its memory may be shortened […] A city on firmer ground.” Ford shows his empathy for the poor and homeless people left in the city. But he also reassures the people in the city that New Orleans will become a city with a lot less chaos. He talks about a re-formed city. “I write in the place of others, today, for the ones who can't be found. […] But today is a beginning. There's no better way to think of it now. Those others surely will be writing soon.” Ford feels the presence of a new city. Ford wants his readers, the people of New Orleans and any-one connected to it, to move on knowing that the city is changed, but that it’s all right. The last sentence might be a metaphor,

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