Remembering the Living

Amy Waldman’s novel, The Submission, focuses on a horrific terrorist attack similar to 9/11 that spurs people into action to remember the dead, yet fails to cause them to appreciate those still alive. In the book, parents devote their time and attention to memorials, politics, and their career ambitions but forget to appreciate their kids. They focus so much time and effort on a memorial and divide themselves and their country, all, ironically, in an attempt to unite and heal their country. Characters, like Paul, become easily frustrated with their children and yet spend each day with people they despise, arguing about a garden. Paul devotes months, even years to a single memorial but when forced to attend a dinner party for his son his wife must force him to go. An attack like the one Waldman describes should cause people to become grateful for the people still in their lives. One woman in particular, the mother of Sean, caused me to feel both pity and anger due to her obvious grief but selfishness. She continually criticized her living son, Sean, and longed for their dead one who perished in the attack. She unloads her misery on Sean and creates unreal expectations for him, such as stopping the building of a memorial, as if hoping he fails. He struggles with “filling the too-big shoes of his dead brother” and through creating pathos, Waldman targets critical parents to instill feelings of guilt (99). While the parents all try to make grand gestures to the dead, they forget that small acts to the living can mean even more.