Falling Man begins with Keith walking away from the wreckage of the World Trade Center on September 11. He notices the chaos that is going on around him in the streets, and the looks of horror and despair on the faces of the people surrounding him. He does not, however, recount his own experience of escaping the tower.When Keith returns to the home of his estranged wife, Lianne, and his son, Justin, he is essentially returning to a place that makes him feel secure. The only time he visits the apartment he lived in during his separation from Lianne brings about a feeling of detachment; Keith refers to the person who lived there in past tense. He creates a dichotomy of the person he was before and after the September 11 attack. As Keith is leaving his old apartment, he says "I'm standing here." My interpretation of why he repeats this is his way of reassuring himself that he is alive and not still in the collapsing tower.
I think Keith returns to Lianne because he has lost his sense of self, and he is grasping for something that makes sense to him and is stable. To him, Lianne and his son represent those attributes. However, the person Keith was before the attack is described to be someone who likes danger and risks, and I think that is one of the reasons he engulfs himself in his poker games. He describes his life during his separation to Lianne as being "content with the narrowest of purviews, that of not noticing." He was happy focusing on his work and poker and nothing else.
It is not until the end of the novel that Keith begins to return to the person he used to be. At this point, he is traveling to play the poker games that he loves so much, even if it means leaving his family behind. I think he redeems himself by the end of the novel in the sense that he returns to the person he essentially is. He feels the pull to travel to his poker tournaments and lose himself in the anonymity of the games, and he does not stay with Lianne for the sake of feeling safe anymore.
By the end of the novel, Keith is finally able to come to terms with his survival. He is able to describe what happened to him while he was in the collapsing tower on September 11, and I think that is where he finds his redemption.
3 comments:
Do you think DeLillo likes the person that Keith "used to be"? He is disengaged, alienated, selfish. In the end, when he returns to the Towers, what does he remember that might indicate the possibility of redemption?
Do you think DeLillo likes the person that Keith "used to be"? He is disengaged, alienated, selfish. In the end, when he returns to the Towers, what does he remember that might indicate the possibility of redemption?
To answer that question, I don't think that anyone's opinion on the person that Keith used to be is extremely important. I don't think that any of the members of the Neudecker family were portrayed as extremely likeable, but this is what made the novel seem like a more accurate depiction of what 3 New Yorkers experienced in the aftermath of 9/11.
The fact that Keith tries to rescue Rumsey does redeem him from his "former" selfishness, it is pretty clear that he still prioritizes his own interests over his family's. Although we may not look at Keith very favorably, I think this really makes him human. I had a lot of problems with the dialogue of this novel sounding a bit too contrived, like no one would really speak to each other in that way. But the personalities of Lianne, Justin, and Keith are what make the novel believable.
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