Word: shock
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...destructive attitude that a free and democratic society can hold: that life is not worth living and that all our efforts will eventually lead to pain and disappointment. The most frustrating aspect of this is that often such thought is not expressed genuinely but rather because it will shock and entertain and earn a profit...
When it premiered in France in the 1950s, Jean Genet's The Maids must have been a shock. The play, based on the true story of two sisters who murdered their employer in the early 1930s, blends two kinds of provocation: it draws the audience into the violent, deranged fantasy world of the maids, and at the same time presents their madness as a product of class exploitation. Genet's original audience was being spooked and indicted at the same time...
...rescue efforts were made very difficult by the clouds of smoke and a weak fire hydrant system. There wasn't enough water pressure to reach the higher floors in some of the buildings. The rubble also made reaching the injured difficult. The people on the street are in shock. The area that was hit is considered the best-guarded area in the city. Many prominent buildings were damaged, including some of the city's best hotels. Nobody has claimed responsibility, but it is certain that it was the Tamil rebels. We knew a major attack would happen after the government...
Seeing a disposal site for inmates who disappeared, and whose murders were described by fellow prisoners, came as a shock to a 58-year-old Croat electrical engineer, who told his story last week. The skilled workman had been spared internment because he was needed to help maintain power lines. One morning in June 1992, he says, his crew was checking a line near the livestock farm when they abruptly halted. Off the road, where the oddly green patch now sits, was a large excavation with parts of clothed corpses protruding, and with a yellow bulldozer parked nearby...
Clarence's subsequent resignation from the ministry sends shock waves that will ripple down through the Wilmot family history. His youngest son Teddy, watching his father try to support the family by selling encyclopedias door to door and then slowly dying of tuberculosis, becomes cautious and fearful. He takes a job as a soda jerk and eventually marries one of his customers. She is religious, but Teddy tells her not to expect him to share her faith: "My poor dad wanted to believe and needed to believe and God just stayed silent...