Loss
Loss is a broad theme that encompasses both tragedy and death. Both are shown in the book Falling Man. Not only have the characters lost their faith in the world after the attacks of 9/11, but they have lost their way in the world. No one really knows what to do and lives are being torn up because of it. The characters Keith and Lianne cannot re-secure their relationship with each other, and Lianne's mother Nina breaks up with Martin. Everything in this book is being torn up and lost just because of the actions of a few.
Memories
Everyone in this book has terrible memories of what happened on that terrible day. Lianne works with Alzheimer's patients, who are slowly losing their memories. Lianne, while working with these patients, fears that the same thing might happen to her. Lianne and Keith have recollections of the attacks, both of them fearing that there might be another attack one day. In all, every character is filled with memories, almost all of them bad.
The world after 9/11
The falling shirt that Keith sees after escaping the 9/11 is a surreal sight and it moves "afloat" from the previous world to the world after 9/11, a world marked by terror and devastation. The novel has been named after the banned picture that was unintentionally captured during the attack by a photographer because it was so disturbing. The world of terror, is marked by fear, paranoia and a sense of detachment from the world people inhabit and the other people around them. The protagonist Keith himself becomes measure to understand the impact the tragedy has on the minds of the citizens of America. After the attack, Keith walks back to the apartment Justin, their son trying to cope with the tragedy in his own insignificant ways: he uses his binoculars to look through the sky for Bill Lawton who is actually Bill Laden as he adopts his father's trauma and is scared of the possibility of another attack.
DeLillo's bold move of providing us with the perspective of Hammad, the victimizer helps us to draw a clear line of segregation between the world pre-9/11 attack where there was no terrorizer and the world after 9/11.
The post-modern elements in the texts, its disconnectedness, the incomplete perspectives of the characters all contribute in depicting the world of after. the novel starts with Keith narrowly escaping alive from the attack and ends with a detailed description of the time when the attack is just about to take place, becoming a circle which implies that it is impossible to escape the world after 9/11 which is the world of terror.
The complex nature of the human psyche
Keith constantly goes through an inner conflict: he tries to go on living his life peacefully but is unable to forget the memories of the attack. When anyone else asks him to talk about his experience he refuses to do so in hopes of being able to forget, but fails desperately. Keith also resigns from his job as a lawyer and begins to play poker with his friends like he used to before but all of this only emphasizes on his constant running away from the memories of the attack.
Lianne struggles from paranoia: her father had killed himself with a gun because he had Alzheimer and did not want to live till the day he had forgotten all his memories and all the people he loved. Ironically even though Lianne worked with patients of Alzheimers and helped them revitalize their memory, Lianne constantly suffered from the fear of losing her own memory.
When DeLillo gives us the perspective of the terrorizer, he also introduces Hammad who is human-like character with conflicting thoughts unlike how terrorists are commonly perceived. We see Hammad questioning what God wants and whether killing himself would help them achieve their target: “But does a man have to kill himself in order to count for something, be someone, find the way?” (175). We then see him self-consoling and manipulating his thoughts by telling himself that the world first changes in the minds of men who want to see the change in the world. He sticks to this strain of thought and in the end we see the crashing of the twin towers.
