Amid all the images of destruction and carnage documented on September 11, 2001, one that remains, to this day, a standout of the atrocities is The Falling Man. The title says it all, with a candid shot of a man plunging to his death from the North Tower of what was once the real World Trade Center (whatever has cropped up in its place, it has to be said, is all merely part of the simulation that came together after that day). When faced with two pretty much equally terrible choices—ergo the shit sandwich or shit cereal paradox—he chose to jump rather than to stay in the building and get burned alive/die of smoke inhalation. Perhaps watching others around him suffering that form of death, he opted for the quickest method of expiration. No sense sticking around to fight the fate that Islamic extremists had carved out for him and those unfortunate enough to be a slave to the wage inside the WTC that day. He would die, and do it as gracefully as he could in a situation so unprecedented.
In the photo captured by Richard Drew for the Associated Press, the still officially unidentified man (though his identity has been speculated upon) has an aura of calm serenity. Of course, this was likely the furthest thing from the case as the plunge unfolded in real time, yet when captured in that split second, at precisely 9:41:15 a.m., there is a proud nobility to the man—as though he has made a complete reconciliation with Death. As though to say, “Here Mr. Reaper, let me take some of the legwork out of this for you.” And so, the reaper stepped aside and sent his scythe to work on someone else who didn’t seem quite as ready to not only accept their destiny, but catalyze it.
So unpleasant was the reality of what this man represented to people, that after The New York Times published the image on page seven the following day, it was essentially “struck from the record” until 2003, when an Esquire article by Tom Junod came out that expounded on all the ways this photograph was one of the most historically significant from the day. Bodies falling from the sky, try as people might, was not something that could be abolished from the memory of 9/11. Was, obviously, a fundamental aspect of why it was so spine-chilling. An adjective also possibly most applicable of all to watching the unraveling of the myth of “the American spirit,” which had never been faced with such a level of attack from a foreign enemy (though America tends to consider all enemies foreign) on U.S. soil. One could argue that going so long without one (for not before or since Pearl Harbor had any such act been perpetrated) had caused the Fates to gather up all the force and strength of an assault that was on steroids as recompense for all the time lost without wreaking any havoc upon the nation. From the standpoint of those who had aimed to prove that the American spirit was all smoke and mirrors, “the jumpers” might be construed as “weak,” or, as Junod put it, “…this was an ending as unimaginable as it was unbearable: Americans responding to the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world with one prolonged act of—if these words can be applied to mass murder—mass suicide.”
Outside of the Jonestown Massacre, this was the most intensely cult-like ritual in recent memory. Junod’s description pinpoints this as he relays, “They began jumping not long after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died. They jumped continually, from all four sides of the building, and from all floors above and around the building’s fatal wound… For more than an hour and a half, they streamed from the building, one after another, consecutively rather than en masse, as if each individual required the sight of another individual jumping before mustering the courage to jump himself or herself.” In other words, to quote Titanic, detailing another disaster that invoked the shit sandwich or shit cereal paradox, “You jump, I jump.”
Whoever the falling man really was, it seemed he didn’t need to look to anyone for guidance and assurance about his decision. It didn’t matter that he, nor anyone else in the building, would never know the how or who or why of the explosion. All that mattered was he had a clear-cut choice to make. A decision that had to be settled upon regardless of the fact that neither outcome would result in something favorable to his future.
For Americans, who are not fond of looking at the ugliest, most brutal aspects of life—even if the First Amendment should make such exploration more robust and unfiltered than other countries—could not bear to see such a display of defeat. Of surrender. It meant something more symbolic to them than it would have to any other nationality. The Falling Man, in so many ways, was the crystallization of the U.S.’ own downfall, its shift into the post-Empire portion of its timeline. For that day would forever divide United States history into Before and After. To say nothing of New York City’s own shift toward an even more corporate soullessness under the pretense of “rebuilding” and becoming “stronger than ever.”
But that was not the main takeaway from this forever-haunting image. It was that the two primary options we’re presented with in any scenario signify a proverbial catch-22. Die by the virus or die by the failing economy. Die by the lies of a Democrat or the lies of a Republican. It’s all shit. The Falling Man, more than any visual in documented history, can only elucidate that we’re all just trying to choose the least unpleasant means to our own destruction.
