The Main Gate: Reflections

The Main Gate by The Man at the Microphone is an inventive and, at times, metaphysical reflection on the city of Washington during the chaos of the Second World War. While Graham confesses she “ [has] no idea why this author chose to remain anonymous”, I believe it has much to do with the purpose of describing Washington in an objective manner. Midway through my reading of this essay, the author’s anonymity became clearer in his depiction of the city as an ‘idea’. The Man in the Microphone’s main thesis is only that Washington is ever changing in its meaning and that this sweltering valley on the banks of the Potomac River is the ‘main gate’ of American life and structure. Yet, despite the anonymous author’s lucid reflections, I found myself at the end of the article returning to his initial statement of Washington’s amorphous existence. I have found in my short time here that this city does change from day to day. Perhaps not as poetically as the author would have you believe and perhaps not in a grand metaphysical sense, however, I notice a daily change of focus. Eight months ago, Washington was a two-term old president and a deadly, ill-conceived war. Today, it is a new and diverse president and a sickly economy. It is amazing how little attention we pay to the war. However, as the Man at the Microphone asserted, things will change. Washington is an idea that, like its citizens, is far from static.

- Charlie