Campbell - Falling Man

  In the Falling Man, Don Delillo takes the reader through the terrifying glimpse of the despair and desperation representative of hell in the moments after the jihadist commandeered plane struck the towers. This is seen through the eyes of Keith who worked in one of the towers.  At one point in the book Keith is described as the archetypical male who is a man’s man, a confidant and stoic person that other men look to and aspire to be; however, this quality is also described as a reason for is lack of understanding or intimacy of woman he is close to.  This was an important point to make in my mind because it helps and link Hammad and Keith and explain how they arrived at this crossroads of life and explains Hammad’s eventual submission to Amir and acceptance of his place in the brother hood.  I though this was also important and relevant to how the book ended which described Hammad’s last moments before intersecting with the beginning moments of Keith’s experience with the attack on the towers. I think this illustrated, for the reader, that one man was realizing his destiny and salvation in what he believed to be the ultimate sacrifice for God which set another man on a course to salvation.

  Keith was a lot like his wife Lianne’s dementia patients in regards to his recollection of the events and moments after the planes struck the towers and he ended up in Lianne’s doorway. Like the dementia patients was in a fog and could not seem to get a round turn on the memories.

When Keith found Florence, the owner of the briefcase, he found himself able to find and locate the missing parts or his recollection of those hellish moments.  It was not until the end of the novel, that the reader was given a more in-depth glimpse into Ketih’s hell in those moments after the planes struck the tower and how he came to be in possession of the briefcase.  Both the tragic events and the brief case lead him to the two places he could begin his road to salvation. Returning to his family and finding Florence. 

  I fell the book ultimately and unfortunately demonstrated that we in the west, are viewed by others in the world through the lens of the media and our film industry.  Often time both sensationalize the immoral decadences, deviance, greed, self gratification and worst our society has to offer.  Furthermore, the book tries to contrast the dominance and power of America an all of our technology with those in less developed countries who successfully used our reliance on technology and false sense of security while at the same time utilizing low tech personal contact to circumvent detection and inflict an act of justified, in their eyes, attack against an immoral and imperialistic oppressor.