Close Reading 1--September 12th: "Hijackers Surprised to Find Selves In Hell"

On the 10^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, the satirical news website The Onion reprinted an article that it has published just days after the attacks: “Hijackers Surprised to Find Selves in Hell.”  The anonymous author skillfully uses the tools of imagery, details, diction, language, and syntax to create an article that is flippant, satirical, and hilarious, and at the same time contains an underlying serious political message exposing the delusion of those who imagine that they are doing “God’s work” by committing violence against others, and believe they will be rewarded for it.  (I chose this article because it is an excellent example of satire, illustrating the anger that many felt in the wake of 9/11; The Onion is famous—or infamous—for daring to make comedy out of very serious, even taboo subjects like 9/11, and therefore illustrates the riskiness of satire as a literary form.  It is also important to note that the “article” is specifically aimed at the perpetrators of the attack; I am not in any way suggesting anything about Muslims or Islam more generally.)

The most obvious and striking use of imagery is the gory detail in which the author describes, and has the characters describe, “Na’al, the lowest circle of hell in Islam.”  It is in this realm, in which the terrorists now dwell, and they—to their surprise—are now being subjected to every kind of horrific torture imaginable, and some which aren’t.  They are literally being torn limb from limb as they give their statements: one terrorist is trying “to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach,” and is suffering through being “fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit;”  other examples of this extreme imagery are one terrorist being “skewered from eye socket to bunghole and then placed on a spit so that their flesh could be roasted by the searing gale of flatus which issues forth from the haunches of Asmoday” and having their “flesh…melted from their bones like wax in the burning embrace of the Mother of Cowards.”  The details are what gives the actual image the sting.  The author does not simply state that they are going to be tortured, or combust.  No, they are so evil they are going to “suckle from the 16 poisoned leathern teats of Gophahmet, Whore of Betrayal”, and then “burst from an unwholesome engorgement of curdled bile”.  The author makes quite clear that not only are they sucking bile, but the bile is curdled and unwholesome and the teats are poisoned and leathern as well.  They’re not even ordinary poisoned leathered teats.  They’re the Whore of Betrayal’s poisoned leathered teats.  And why would the author spend so much energy making hell so chock-full of such gory imagery and details?  It gives the reader a sort of feeling of revenge.  The terrorists are paying for their deeds in hell.  At the same time, the sheer “over the top” excess of the descriptions also, strangely enough, make them funny.  The punishments are so gory that they become absurd.

In addition, the satirical humor of the piece comes from the way the gory descriptions sound practically scriptural.  The article begins by referencing the Qur’an itself, citing the Islamic name for hell (“Na’al”), and throughout, the article’s language and diction have the sound of scriptural passages.  Having little or no knowledge of the Qur’an’s description of hell, I would be willing to bet that some of the demons actually exist in the Islamic Bible.  The most Biblical-sounding language is one demon’s description of the terrorists entering hell: “there was a tumultuous conflagration of burning steel and fuel at our gates, and from it stepped forth these hijackers, the blessed name of the Lord already turning to molten brass on their accursed lips”.  This diction represents the religious fervor of the terrorists in question, and conveys the fact that while they believed their religion would reward them, instead their religion is damning them for the dire misinterpretation.

However, what makes the article humorous—so much so that it effectively masks what some may argue is the slightly unhealthy feeling of justice in the reader, and the actual blood and guts of what is going on—is the juxtaposition of the scriptural and modern syntax, diction, and language.  If the author just wrote “here’s what’s happening to the terrorists:” and followed the statement up with a lot of flowery descriptions of apocalyptic damnation, it would be completely un-funny and quite disturbing.  But by mixing almost Biblical imagery with everyday, modern dialogue, the article becomes humorous.  The article follows the dry standard newspaper format—it begins, for example, with the standard byline identify the “where” of the action.  But when this standard format is mixed with the scriptural descriptions, it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious.  The “where” in this case is “Jahannem, Outer Darkness”.  Several times the reporter refers to “underworld officials” and “Hell sources”.  Apocalyptic, biblical language is followed abruptly with mundane slang phrases.  For example, one demon describing the unbearable tortures inflicted on one terrorist, and then sums it up with a dry “that can’t be good.” 

The combination of both scriptural and colloquial language serves to underline the conflict between modern view of ordinary, everyday reality, and the terrorists’ ideals about eliminating the corruption they see in America: a spiritual act as they see it.  The article draws on the religiously fanatical mind-set of the terrorists, and the belief that they were doing the work of religion, and turns it against them to describe their punishment in similarly apocalyptic, biblical terms.  This mixed diction and language also serves to actively show the terrorist’s delusion.  Under the impression they would go to the Paradise promised in their religion, they are instead going to the gruesome hell.  But by making the article satirical and funny, the author is able to take out some of his anger at the terrorists, and symbolize their twisted views, without causing the reader to leave the webpage.

Link: http://www.theonion.com/articles/hijackers-surprised-to-find-selves-in-hell,1445/