The allegory of the nation
The story of America is captured in Keith's story. Notice that the name Keith has a significant meaning in connection to 9/11 because of Toby Keith's famous song that was the immediate best-seller in the years following the attack. Keith's story is a tightly-packed symbolic allegory describing the emotional effects of the Terrorist Attacks on the nation. The events take him into the home of his ex-wife, suggesting a lengthy consideration of the past which is not perfect (they were already divorced when the attack happened). This nostalgia is an attempt to capture an innocence from the past that is not possible to recapture, symbolized by the dysfunction in that makeshift re-marriage.
Keith's compatibility with Florence
Instead of finding hope and consolidation in the old marriage of yesteryear, Keith finds solace in a new relationship to Florence. Florence and Keith share elements of deep suffering; both were survivors from lower levels of the World Trade Center towers who were able to escape. In this symbolic relationship, the reader discovers the unity of shared suffering and the desire for healing through community. They also discuss survivor's guilt.
Lianne's mother-complex
Lianne is described by the author as a woman who is more emotionally attached to her mother than to her husband (or ex-husband). This is shown to be a dynamic problem with their marriage, and when Keith returns, Lianne's relationship to Nina shows her more than her relationship to Keith. Nina symbolizes some aspect of maternity that also includes art and meaning, so that it is more complicated than just an attachment to "Mother." The mother-complex is a symbol for a strong desire for protection, meaning, and for things to make sense.
Alzheimers disease as a symbol
The journey into the past is symbolized by Keith's dramatic return to his ex-wife after the crash. The frustrating impossibility of that journey is captured in the ex-wife's daily work. She helps patients with Alzheimer's disease who are biologically impaired by plaque in their brain. This illness prevents them from experiencing the past until they are like children, with no fixed memories to help them frame their experience of reality. This symbolizes the impossible and frantic desire to capture life before 9/11, but like the patients, the nation cannot remember what it was precisely about the past that they'd like to return to. In any case, the nostalgia is shown to be powerless.
Divorce and marriage
The motif of divorce and marriage is a clear aspect of the novel's meaning. The Falling Man is Keith who falls apart in the catastrophe of the falling towers, who attempts to fall back into an old marriage, and whose "falling in love" with Florence is disrupted by pain and fear. Lianne is not right for Keith, as they discovered a long time ago, but here they are, playing house, pretending to be married again. Keith isn't cheating on his wife to meet a new woman, but he feels like he is. In the novel's metaphysic, we see a mother who loves art dating an art dealer; there is the suggestion and reminder of the union that is so desperately craved in post-9/11 America.
