Joyce Carol Oates
OUR WALL
Long before many of us were born, The Wall was.
It
is difficult for even the most imaginative and reckless of us to
posit a time when The Wall
was not.
Of course there are people - older people - who claim to
remember not only the construction ofThe Wall (which, in its earliest
stages, was rather primitive: primarily barbed wire, guarded by
sentries and dogs) but a time when The Wall did not in any form
exist.
Could one go freely into the Forbidden Zone then? We childen
never tire of asking, faintly scandalized and ready to burst into
nervous laughter as if in the presence of something obscene. But the
elderly tell us that there was no Forbidden Zone then, in the days of
their youth .
No Forbidden Zone?-we are incredulous.
No Forbidden Zone? - we
are somewhat frightened.
The shrewdest child among us, who is always asking bold,
impudent questions, says brightly:
If
there was no Forbidden Zone
then, why was The Wall constructed?
But no one understands his question. He repeats it insolently:
If
there was no Forbidden Zone then, why was The Wall constructed?
No one,
not even our oldest citizen, understands . Each of the boy's words,
taken singly, is comprehensible; but the question in the entirety is
incomprehensible ...
Why
was The Wall constructed?
It is far easier–
most of us find it easier- to assume that The Wall is eternal, that it
ever was and ever shall be. And that the Forbidden Zone (which of
course none of us has ever seen) is eternal too.
Several times a year, though never on predictable dates, our
leaders declare a Day of Grace. Which means that citizens of our
country above the age of eighteen who are free of debt, familial
responsibilities, and other private or civic handicaps, may attempt to
scale The Wall without fear of punishment or reprisal. On a Day of
Grace all explosives buried in the earth are inoperative; the current
