46 pages • 1 hour read
Don DeLilloFalling Man
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The World Trade Center
The towers at the World Trade Center were struck by planes on September 11, 2001, in a terrorist attack by a group named Al-Qaeda. Falling Man portrays the towers and the attacks, using the towers as important symbols whose meaning is different for different characters. The diffusive nature of the symbolism associated with the towers illustrates the changing perspectives found across cultures. For an American man like Keith, the towers symbolize success. He not only works in the towers, but he also orientates his life around them. He moves out of the apartment he shares with Lianne and into an apartment closer to the towers, feeling a need to be associated with this symbol of professional and cultural success. The towers become a symbolic part of Keith’s identity, making their destruction more devastating to his psyche. After the towers collapse, Keith struggles to redefine his identity. He goes through a process in which his ideas of success and value are entirely altered. By the end of the novel, he spends an increasing amount of time away from New York City. He does not like to be reminded of the absence of the towers, a symbolic reminder of the dissociative effect of the attack on his identity. Keith feels the loss of the towers on a symbolic level, forcing him to reconsider every aspect of his identity.
Martin is a German man with a checkered past. To him, the towers are a symbol of arrogance. He splits his time between Europe and America, meaning that he is keenly aware of the differences between the two cultures. Added to this, he is an art dealer with a refined appreciation for symbolism and artistic meaning. He can only view the towers as a domineering gesture. He believes they are a symbol of America’s frail arrogance. The towers were built, he believes, with the idea that they could never be toppled. This belief turned the towers into targets, causing a huge blow to the collective American psyche when they were destroyed. Martin understands the traumatic implications of the attacks on a symbolic level. With the attack on the towers, Americans are forced to deal with their own mortality. A country that has known comfort, success, and imperial power for decades is suddenly reminded of its own frailty. For Martin, the towers and their destruction are symbolic reminders that American culture and society are not as invincible as they would like to believe.
Hammad’s interpretation of the towers provides a non-Western insight into the symbolic meaning of the September 11 attacks. Under Amir’s tutelage, Hammad understands that the World Trade Center is a symbol of American imperialism. The terrorists attack the towers precisely because they have symbolic value. In their attempts to strike at the heart of Western imperialism, the terrorists select the target representing the globalized trade network of American economic imperialism that the terrorists resent. The shifting nature of the symbolic meaning of the towers shows that there is no singular, objective symbolic meaning to the World Trade Center. Instead, the towers are a blank canvas onto which the characters project their personal and cultural biases. Both when the towers are standing and when the towers are destroyed, they become focal points for the symbolic trauma that the characters feel. They are malleable, changing symbols, ironically symbolizing the atomization and lack of unity that causes the alienation and isolation felt by all the characters.
Falling Man
Lianne sees a performance artist named Falling Man in New York City after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The artist uses a safety harness to suspend himself from the buildings and replicate a famous image of a man who leaped from one of the top floors in the tower during the attacks rather than die inside. The image became famous in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the performance artist keeps this image alive in the public’s minds long after the attack. The Falling Man is a symbol of lingering trauma. On the two occasions when Lianne sees him in public, the artist is anonymous. The gesture—throwing oneself from a building rather than facing certain death—is an attempt to maintain agency in an impossible situation. The Falling Man decides to commit suicide and die in a manner of his choosing rather than have his fate chosen for him by the terrorists. The other characters feel this desperate and doomed attempt to assert agency over one’s life. Keith and Lianne both struggle with the search for meaning and control after the attacks, which is why Lianne is so affected by the Falling Man’s performance. While she might not voice her concerns about the lack of control, she sympathizes with the man’s symbolic attempt to regain control over his life.
At the end of the novel, Lianne learns that the artist behind the Falling Man performance has died. The man died of natural causes after a long history of struggles with a spinal injury, though he had planned to commit one final performance of Falling Man in which he did not use a harness. The intrusion of fate into the artist’s best-laid plans is another symbolic reminder for Lianne about the nature of the universe. The Falling Man artist had planned for one final performance to define his creation and bring a natural sense of closure to a lifetime of pain. Instead, he was killed by external and natural forces that he could not control. Lianne has spent a lifetime planning, only for her plans to be ruined by terrorist attacks, a waning marriage, or her father’s decision to commit suicide. Like the end of the artist’s life, all her best intentions have been curbed by others’ actions and the intervention of fate and circumstances. The death of the Falling Man brings one last degree of symbolism to his performance, reminding Lianne that she has little control over the machinations of the universe, no matter how much she plans.
Binoculars and Bill Lawton
After the September 11 attacks, Justin and the Siblings perplex their parents. They use a pair of binoculars to scan the New York skyline in search of more planes and they tell one another that a man named Bill Lawton is the mastermind behind the attacks. The binoculars and the character of Bill Lawton symbolize the children’s struggles to deal with the terrorist attack. They do not have the knowledge, the understanding, or the framework to process what has happened, so they turn the aftermath of the attacks into a game. By turning the terrorist attack into a secret children’s game, Justin and the Siblings turn an event that has devastated and traumatized all the adults in their lives and into something they can understand. Reducing the situation to a simple children’s game is an attempt to understand September 11 through the minds of children, and the binoculars and Bill Lawton are symbols of this gamification of the traumatic implications of a life-changing event.
Bill Lawton is a misunderstanding of the name Osama bin Laden. The children do not follow the news in the same way their parents do, nor do they understand the complex geopolitical and historical circumstances that led to the attacks. They turn the name Bin Laden into Bill Lawton illustrates how they are only hearing snippets of information and trying to fit these into a context they understand. None of the Caucasian children—born and raised in New York City—understands the name of a Saudi Arabian man, so they turn it into something more familiar. Bin Laden becomes Bill Lawton, interpolating and westernizing the name to fit into a pattern they understand. Lianne, Isabel, and Keith are amused at the misunderstanding, but the name Bill Lawton is an important symbolic reminder that the children are also trying to make sense of a devastating attack.
Simultaneously, the adults’ reaction to the use of the binoculars and the name Bill Lawton provides context to the broader social reaction to the attacks. The children turn the aftermath of September 11 into a game, imposing their understanding of the world onto the situation to make sense of the absurd situation. The adults react in the same way. Lianne becomes addicted to reading everything she can about the attacks, while Keith becomes addicted to the game of poker. Both reactions attempt to impose order and control onto a random and traumatic event. The adults use their existing understanding to contextualize the attacks, just like the children do with their games. The adults’ reaction to using binoculars and the name Bill Lawton symbolizes how all characters process trauma in the same way. While the children’s reactions may seem naïve and silly to the adults, their own reactions are just as naïve and ineffective.
Related Titles
By Don DeLillo
