Summary Of The Ticking Is The Bomb By Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn spends a large majority of his memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb, reflecting on both the Abu Ghraib prison scandal of 2004-2005 and his impending fatherhood, seemingly placing two incompatible ideas side by side. At first glance, the memoir seems disjointed and causes the reader to question why Flynn would choose to write about parenthood alongside depictions of torture. Close examination of the text, however, reveals Flynn’s complex and nuanced worldview. Flynn finds torture to be reprehensible, and a significant portion of the memoir is devoted to coming to terms with the fact that he had shaken hands with known torture-advocate Sam Harris. Perhaps he does not wish to raise his daughter in a world where scandals like Abu Ghraib

He is aware that most of the children from his memories who grew up to volunteer for the Iraq war did so out of the desire to make a positive difference or provide for their futures, yet he also realizes that “that’s not why they were sent,” alluding to the Bush administration's nefarious motivations (46). Flynn sees a connection between the children who saw the dead bodies of the homeless that he himself had a hand in turning away from the shelter, their decision to volunteer for the war, and the general attitude held by (what he perceives as) the public regarding torture. In making these connections within his own mind, Flynn is able to assess the ways in which a society so blind to the atrocities it commits against people can condition its members from childhood to be complicit in torture. The connection Flynn makes between the children who grew accustomed to the dehumanization of others outside of the homeless shelter and the commentators who so readily dismiss torture as something committed to “blow off steam” or something that is acceptable so long as the torturers do not document it represents his anxieties regarding society’s effects on his own child. With the juxtaposition of these two scenes, Flynn seems to be expressing these anxieties; perhaps being subjected to the constant barrage of messages that the dehumanization of certain groups, particularly marginalized groups such as the homeless or those who practice a different religion or speak a different language than the prescribed norm is acceptable, would cause his own child to grow up just as complicit in the injustices of Bush’s America as he, or anyone else