'Ticket to the disaster'

     In Berne's essay 'Ground Zero', she emphasizes on how a certain area, in her case Ground Zero, has different meanings and views to different people. Often times, authors take a certain place and describe what they see. However, this essay focuses on how different people view the same area as well as describing her emotions felt during her visit to Ground Zero. I personally prefer these types of essays over simple descriptive essays. I find them more interesting to read and it sometimes helps me step back and look at the entire picture instead of one specific detail.
     Her use of tone is interesting. While the subject, Ground Zero, has a very somber tone to begin with she doesn't use that as her tone for her entire essay. I would describe the tone as curiousity mixed with confusing. Her ending, though, was quite warming. She described the wide emptiness where so many had lost their lives. "And by the act of our visiting -whether we are motivated by curiosity or horror or reverence or grief, or by something confujsing that combines them all - that space fills up again." I found this essay as a whole almost to be a question and then the resolution was proposed at the end making it a different kind of descriptive essay that's rarely seen.