My supervisor (Christine) has pointed out to me that I may be dodging the bullets a bit by not facing head on the problems of terrorists in society today. I responded by saying that it was never my intention to do that, but to focus on other aspects of terrorism e.g. some of the other causes and not the effects of terrorism e.g. economic hardship, repression, coercion, etc., etc. I am now wondering whether I was so wise to be so sure and so quick with my response.
It may be that others do not share my need to focus on the importance of the people who are forced to become terrorists instead of the effects that I mentioned. There are two reasons for this. First is that I think there are already a lot of writers writing about this subject e.g. the effects of terrorism in the world today aka John Updike. The second is that these people do not have a voice, an identity because of this e.g. that others make sure that all is done in absolute secrecy. They are almost never heard because they do their work without the knowledge of their families and wind up dead at the end of things. They only, at the most, give their reasons for those acts by recording them during videos, which we get to see in a news bulletin on CNN or the BBC. Beyond that we know nothing about their motivations for wanting to do it.
My character doesn’t have this luxury as he is never actually told of his status; rather, he is told to do individual acts of which he only half knows will lead to his own, personal involvement in the deed. And I have been looking at other theories about suicide which makes for interesting reading. More on that to come.
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