Falling Man

Lianne Glenn is the novel’s second protagonist. Like Keith, she is devastated by the September 11 attacks, but how she experiences the tragedy speaks to the alienation in her life. In a literal and figurative sense, Lianne is an estranged wife. She is removed from her husband but not divorced, just as she feels connected to society but not an actual part of it. Lianne lives on the perimeter of society, observing, documenting, and editing other people’s experiences. In her job as an editor, her role as a therapy group organizer, and her relationship with Keith, she experiences the world vicariously through other people’s lives. She experiences the September attacks in the same way; though she lives in the city and is affected by the attack, the more prominent physical impact on Keith is her connection to the event, which she otherwise mostly watches on television. Lianne’s lived experiences are conducted through other people, never herself. She feels alienated from society because she never experiences anything on her own terms.

Lianne is a freelance editor. For her, editing functions similarly to Keith’s interest in poker. Though she is living vicariously through the writing of others, the editing process gives Lianne a feeling of control and agency. The English language is a defined system with grammatical rules that Lianne enforces. Her job is to ensure that people’s ideas conform to this strict system, finetuning other people’s work to fit within the accepted parameters of language. After the terrorist attacks, Lianne feels a loss of control. She talks to a publisher who mentions that there is the possibility of editing a book about the lead-up to September 11. Lianne desperately wants to edit this book. To her, the opportunity to edit a book that documents the chaos and the failings of the fateful day would be akin to imposing some form of control on the memories and the trauma. Lianne cannot control the world, and she cannot ever fully understand the events of September 11. However, by editing a book on this subject, she can bring the events under her control and feel as though she is exercising agency over a chaotic period in her life.

Lianne’s relationship to the performance artist Falling Man is an interesting summation of her character. She never meets or interacts with Falling Man; she only watches him from afar. Her relationship with the artist is a metaphorical replica of her relationship with most of society, reducing her to an observer role. Her fascination with his performance speaks to her anxieties. Lianne is aware of her alienation from society, and she is worried that—by being so detached—she will never leave a legacy or an impact on the world. The anonymity of the Falling Man allows Lianne to experience vicariously anonymous death on a repeated basis. The implied fate of her performances is the fate that Lianne fears: dying alone and unknown. In her search for meaning and consequence, Lianne adopts religion. She goes to church hoping that attendance may validate the idea of a life after death. However, Lianne never really believes. Her church attendance is as much a performance as the Falling Man, a hollow gesture that encapsulates her anxieties. Lianne tries to feign religious belief, hoping that she will continue her father’s faith legacy. Instead, she adopts his sincere belief and repeats it as a farce. Like the Falling Man replicating the fate of the man who committed suicide on September 11, Lianne takes her father’s authenticity and echoes it as a performance of her own deeply held fears.

Justin is only a young boy when the terrorist attack on September 11 occurs. As such, he does not fully comprehend what is happening. His mother stops him from watching the television news reports, and he only briefly sees his father appear at the apartment, covered in dust and blood. To Justin, the events of September 11 are experienced mainly through the reaction of the adults in his life. He notices a pall that descends on his stricken parents, but the same events bring his father back into his life. Justin experiences September 11 not as a tragic and brutal terrorist attack but as a strange social inflection that changes his parents and allows him to spend more time with his father. By protecting Justin from the trauma of reality, Justin has no other option but to adopt a misconception of what happened.

Justin is not alone in his confusion. His friends—a pair of twins nicknamed the Siblings—gather with him and try to determine what happened to the adults in their lives. Because they are young, they do not understand what terrorism means and cannot comprehend the sheer volume of death and destruction that has taken place. They have no idea about the social upheaval caused by September 11 because they only experience the world as children. However, they do know that something is wrong on a fundamental level. Their attempts to understand events reflect their status as children. They invent a fairytale version of events in which a man named Bill Lawton is flying planes over New York. This version of events is pieced together from the fragments of information gathered from the adults in their lives. Bill Lawton is Osama bin Laden, who orchestrated the attacks but did not fly the planes. Justin and the Siblings’ attempts to create a comprehendible narrative echo the adults’ attempt to do the same. Neither Keith nor Lianne has a complete understanding of events. They piece together what they can to make a comprehendible narrative. Ultimately, their understanding of what happened may be more informed than the children’s version. However, both attempts are conducted with the same motivation, in the same manner. They reflect the characters’ need to build an intelligible explanation of why the world is so suddenly different.

By the end of the novel, Justin is in the same situation as when he began it. Keith has stopped spending time with his family, so the brief burst of close family ties has ended. As with the cycles of violence and the novel’s cyclical structure, Justin experiences how the world works in cycles. Nothing lasts for all the pain, confusion, and occasional moments of happiness, and people pass through repeated phases.

Nina is Lianne’s mother, and, like her daughter, she struggles to find a meaningful connection to society. Nina’s introduction to the novel involves her reminding Lianne about an accurate prediction, in which she warned Lianne not to marry Keith. Lianne rejected her mother’s advice and married Keith, but her response to Nina reveals Nina’s inherent biases. Lianne notes that Nina would forgive all of Keith’s bad behavior if he were an artist rather than a lawyer. Nina’s relationship with Martin illustrates this bias toward artistic or cultured people. Nina forgives Martin’s past and does not care about his possible relationship with a terrorist group. She only cares about his ideas and ability to discuss deep and meaningful subjects. To Nina, philosophy is more important than manner, respect, or loyalty. No matter what Keith does, whether he is loyal or disloyal to Lianne, Nina will never like him because she dislikes his corporate mindset.

Despite her attraction to artists, Nina is not an artist herself. Much like her daughter, she lives vicariously through the art of others. Her dislike of Keith and her bias against similar people is rooted in her insecurity: she knows she is not an artist, so she is instinctively drawn to artistic types to overcompensate for her own self-doubt. This self-doubt continues throughout Nina’s life, and she tries to address this anxiety using painkillers and cigarettes. Nina drinks and smokes too much and is not careful about overmedicating herself, despite her daughter’s advice. Nina’s self-doubts, addictions, and biases show that she is never quite happy with her life. She dies without addressing these doubts, leaving behind a painful legacy for her loved ones and a lifetime of missed opportunities and spurned potential.