Four Times a Fool

At some point in time, we’ve all been met with incompetence.  Or at least we’ve been met with what we identify as incompetence.  As Zeitoun paddles around in his canoe, meticulously setting up a routine that rotates around saving and helping people and animals, he is met with incompetence.  Here I will lie out the latest example of incompetence of the worse kind, poor organization.

Step one:

Zeitoun observes a looting.  “An organized group of military criminals” who “fit the description of those Kathy had warned him about,” (129) were robbing a gas station.  As he attempts to get close, one of the men shows Zeitoun that he is armed.

loot: steal goods from (a place), typically during a war or riot 

Step two:

Zeitoun paddles miles to get to the corner of Napoleon and St. Charles in order to tell the armed forces of a developing situation.  The soldiers, “holding their M-16s,” (135) tell him that they’ll “take care of it.” Because Zeitoun isn’t convinced, he asks them how long they would take and whether he could help. They respond that “about an hour” (135) and that he had to leave.  However, after waiting more than three hours, no one has come to save the person that Zeitoun indicated.

Step three:

Zeitoun encounters, collects, and distributes MREs all throughout the area surrounding his house.  As he “found an abandoned military jeep” (136) with a box full of MREs, Zeitoun “welcomed the opportunity to unload” (136) the merchandise and gives it to a family in need.

MRE: Meal Ready to Eat (given to soldiers when dispatched for a mission)

Step four:

Zeitoun helplessly observes as an entire block is burned to the ground.  Zeitoun simply sat there, “there were no sirens, no authorities of any kind” (152).  He is frustrated that he can’t help, and he realizes that because of the lack of organization, anything can happen.

These four events are proof that the government should have done more.  There are always excuses, always-bureaucratic issues that impede organized help. But, to the people who weren’t helped, or got robbed, this isn’t an excuse. Zeitoun decided to stay in New Orleans to help as many people as he could.  However, there is a chance that his good spirits will end up putting him in harms way.  Of course, I’m being overly simplistic in my analysis of how the government could have done more.  If I’m wrong, if the government was doing anything and everything in its power to help, then at least this blog was a testament to how the book has successfully appealed to my sentimentality (pathos).