The Naked Citadel

Symbols are very much depicted in Beth Loffreda, Oliver Sacks and Susan Faludi's essays. However, in Loffreda's essay "Losing Matt Shepard" and Faludi's essay "The Naked Citadel", symbols are depicted in order to mourn their loss, whereas the symbols in Oliver Sacks essay "The Mind's Eye" provide us insight as to why these crimes take place. In Sacks' essay, blindness is portrayed as a symbol of victory. Each narrative Sacks talks about how people overcame their blindness, which symbolizes a sense of victory, how they take it as an advantage and progress further. Using blindness as lens, we look at why the events took place in Faludi's and Loffreda's essay. Eyesight has become the modern day Hitler- where it affects billions of people. Eyesight

Loffreda's essay title "Losing Matt Shepard" itself speaks great volumes. Her emphasis on "Losing" perhaps shows us a great amount of sorrow felt in the "loss" of Matt. Furthermore, in regard to her emphasis on "losing" she quite clearly shows us how we are losing to value life, which is why these hate crimes occur. Matt had not done any crime, his only crime was being gay. A crime which itself isn't even a crime. On the one hand, she mentions "Hate is not a Wyoming Value"(Loffreda, 241), whereas on the other hand she mentions people saying "I hate gays and I'm not changing my opinion"(Loffreda,248). This double consciousness all but proves Loffreda's point that we do not value human life anymore, and care only for what is best for us. Faludi, on the other hand, makes use of some cadets from The Citadel to mock the Citadel for its ridiculousness as well as prove her point. As Faludi mentions " then gently life up their charges and nurse them with cups of water. At that moment, for the first time in nine months, the older cadets call the knobs by their first names and embrace them"(Faludi,99). This process is supposedly one of becoming a "whole man," a process of being born again. Despite being tipped as a process of becoming a whole man, the choice of words used here depict some contradiction of The Citadel's thoughts itself. "Nine months," "embrace," and "nurse" all words depict indoctrination and being reborn. In contrast, all these words refer to maternal words too, which is precisely why Faludi mentions them, to ridicule The Citadel. They seemingly take up the roles women there, but bafflingly do not allow them inside it. Both authors use of language, along with the violence depicted reinforces their claim regarding the loss