The Falling Man - Use in Literature

Use in Literature

The picture plays an important part in the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The last 15 pages of his text comprise a flip-book collection of images of a similar man shot by photographer Lyle Owerko falling upwards toward the top of the World Trade Center. Although he is not the first to make the claim, Foer demonstrates how the falling man is used as a symbol for grieving families much like the "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier."

Falling Man, a novel by Don DeLillo, is about the events of 9/11. The Falling Man in the novel is a performance artist recreating the events of the photograph. DeLillo says he was unfamiliar with the title of the picture when he named his book. The artist straps himself into a harness and jumps from an elevated structure in a high visibility area (such as a highway overpass), hanging in the pose of the falling man.