Abschlussarbeit

zur Erlangung des Ersten Staatsexamens

für das Lehramt an Gymnasien

Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel

Englisches Seminar

9/11 in Literature and Film

vorgelegt von: Sandra Maschke
14.04.2008

Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. 9/11 as trauma
2.1. Definition of trauma 2
2.2. 9/11 as a traumatic experience 3
3. 9/11 in literature
3.1. Overview 6
3.2. Jonathan Safran Foer "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"
3.2.1. Plot summary  7
3.2.2. Structure and style 9
3.2.3. The narrator 10
3.2.4. Recurring themes and motifs
3.2.4.1. The key 11
3.2.4.2. Loneliness and loss 12
3.2.4.3. The pictures of the falling man 14
3.2.5. Conclusion 16
3.3. Ian McEwan "Saturday"
3.3.1. Plot summary 16
3.3.2. Structure and style 18
3.3.3. Setting of the novel 18
3.3.4. Recurring themes
3.3.4.1. Religion 19
3.3.4.2. Illness 20
3.3.4.3. Terrorism 21
3.3.5. Conclusion 23
3.4. Don DeLillo "Falling Man"
3.4.1. Plot summary  25
3.4.2. Structure and style 25
3.4.3. Recurring themes
3.4.3.1. Terrorism 26
3.4.3.2. Religion 29
3.4.3.3. The Falling Man 31
3.4.3.4. Loss of memory 32
3.4.4. Conclusion 32
3.5. Art Spiegelman "In the Shadow of No Towers"
3.5.1. Structure and style 34
3.5.2. Analysis of plate no. 2 35
3.5.3. Conclusion 39
3.6. Conclusion: 9/11 in literature
3.6.1. Setting  40
3.6.2. The Falling Man 41
3.6.3. Mental diseases / loss of memory 42
3.6.4. Family 43
3.6.5. Religion 44
3.6.6. Politics 44
4. 9/11 in film 
4.1. Documentaries 45
4.2. Movies 46
4.3. Oliver Stone "World Trade Center"
4.3.1. Plot summary 46
4.3.2. Authentic background 48
4.3.3. Fact vs. fiction 48

4.3.4. Inaccuracies and dramatizations 49

4.3.5. Recurring themes 51

4.3.5.1. Heroism 51

4.3.5.2. Family 52

4.3.5.3. Patriotism 52

4.3.5.4. Religion 53

4.3.6. Film techniques 54

4.3.7. Conclusion 55

4.4. Jules and Gédéon Naudet "9/11"

4.4.1. Background information 56

4.4.2. Summary of the film 56

4.4.3. Arrangement of the film  58

4.4.3.1.Narration 58

4.4.3.2. Creating suspense / dramatization 59

4.4.3.3. External footage  61

4.4.4. Central themes 62

4.4.4.1. Heroism 62

4.4.4.2. Patriotism 63

4.4.5. Conclusion 64

4.5. Conclusion: 9/11 in film 65

5. Final Conclusion 68

6. Bibliography 70

1

1. Introduction
"Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch"1 This is a famous quotation by Theodor W. Adorno. It may surprise to find it at the beginning of a thesis paper called "9/11 in Literature and Film". Obviously, the amount of victims of the Holocaust and 9/11 differ enormously, and the events are therefore incomparable. However, many people have labeled the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that happened on September 11, 2001 as the major catastrophe of our times; irreversibly changing the world we live in. Causing a trauma and massive grief to many people and leading to further deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq (civilians as well as soldiers), the attacks have huge significance for today′s worldwide political and social situation. For example, the issue of withdrawing the troops from Iraq is a major point of discussion in the ongoing presidential candidate debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It is the question of how one can do justice to the many victims of 9/11 and its aftermath by means of literature and film. Is it possible to put trauma and grief in words, and maybe even contribute to overcome these states and accept reality? This will be the central focus of this thesis paper. To examine how 9/11 is represented in literature, I have chosen to examine three novels and one collection of comic strips. These have been written by very different authors: a hyped youngster, an old hand at fiction about politics and terrorism, an Englishman and a comic-strip artist who has before dealt with the Holocaust in a graphic novel. This indicates a great variety of how to come to terms with the traumatic experience; however, they share more than may be visible at first sight. Additionally, I will analyze two films, a documentary and a mainstream Hollywood feature and show how these films surprisingly similarly tackle issues of loss and grief.

^{1 Theodor W. Adorno, "Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft", Gesammelte Werke, vol.10, ed. Theodor W. Adorno (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1980) 11-30, 19.}

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2. 9/11 as trauma
2.1. Definition of trauma
A trauma, in the way it is commonly understood and defined in public, is basically a "psychological reaction to overly upsetting, extreme events"2. Examined closer, however, the definition goes further than that rather simple classification. In this broader consideration, traumata can be labeled as events which threaten to bring injury or death to people and thereby prompt "intense feelings of fear, helplessness, or horror."3 An important element of trauma is the fact that the triggering event leads to a delay in coping with that event, but still has an intense effect on the psyche of the individual experiencing the trauma. Lieberman quotes Freud to support this claim:
It may happen that someone gets away, apparently unharmed, from the spot where he has suffered a shocking event ... In the course of the following weeks, however, he develops a series of grave psychical and motor symptoms, which can be ascribed only to his shock ... He has developed a `traumatic neurosis′.4
The event has not yet fully sunken into the person′s consciousness, but rather seems to be lingering in the subconscious, manifesting itself by means of several symptoms5.
Quoting Cathy Caruth, a contemporary trauma theorist, Lieberman continues to extend this definition by stressing the psychological delay of the traumatic event and its consequences, namely the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)6. The structure of the experience and reception of the event is delayed, it "is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it."7 Paraphrased, this means that the event is avoided and relived at the same time, which is apparently a paradox. However, it is this "haunting" which is problematic, as the affected persons cannot cope with the original event while at the same reliving it again and again. Therefore, it can be labeled as a belated immediacy8. By not digesting this event in the mind, it is as if the affected person has never even lived through that devastating experience, as that person in a way never really lived through that event on a conscious level of the mind. This non-experience leads to the phenomenon of the event as a "recurrent source of pain and as a site of perpetual

^{2 Jessica Catherine Lieberman, "Traumatic Images", Photographies 1.1. (2008): 87-102, 88.
3 Barbara Ganzel et al., "The Aftermath of 9/11: Effect of Intensity and Recency of Trauma on Outcome", Emotion 7.2. (2007): 227-238, 227.
4 Lieberman 88.
5 Ganzel 227.
6 Ganzel 127.
7 Ganzel 127.
8 Ganzel 127.}

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reinterpretation."9 The delay of the experience is a form of self-protection, ultimately distancing it from the event, consequently worsening that encounter by keeping it in an unresolved state. The processes of memory and forgetting (and, in my interpretation, mourning), are interrupted. The reliving of the event becomes compulsive. It transforms into a sort of open wound, the relationship between the event and its meaning is disabled10. The past becomes the present, or, since the experience has in a way never happened to the affected person, the present is a timeless state.
2.2. 9/11 as a traumatic experience
The events on September 11, 2001 have caused worldwide dismay affecting people who have watched them live on TV or the internet and who listened to their radios. Initially, many people (including myself) responded in disbelief, unable to grasp what was going on in downtown Manhattan. However, the experience was definitely a lot worse for the people directly affected by it, be it by watching the attacks in the streets of Manhattan or, even worse, by being inside the attacked buildings. Researchers have found out that, after 9/11, a proportion of 11, 2% of residents in the New York metropolitan area suffered from symptoms likely to constitute PTSD11. This is an enormous amount of people, considering how many people live in the area. However, considering the fact that millions of people saw the same images on screen simultaneously, the amount of people who experienced the attacks as a trauma may be significantly higher. I want to make clear that I do not in any way want to compare the experiences of TV audiences with those of the actual victims. However, coming back to the earlier definition of trauma as the witnessing of an event that threatens people′s lives, 9/11 witnessed on TV clearly can be labeled as a traumatic event, if only in a milder form than a trauma which threatens one′s own life12. Due to the fact that the event was simultaneously broadcasted around the globe made the viewers feel as if they were actually "there", experiencing it themselves, and, due to their scope as an attack on Western civilization and America in particular, affected many more people than those physically present13.
The form, in which the events were experienced, however, was a mediated one. The images are well-known and dominated newspapers and TVs for days and weeks

9 Ganzel 127.
10 Ganzel 127.
11 Heidi Resnick et. al., "Research on Trauma and PTSD in the Aftermath of 9/11", PTSD Research Quarterly 15.1 (2004): 1-8, 1.
12 Nordicom Review Homepage, Britta Timm Knudsen, "The Eyewitness and the Affected Viewer. September 11 in the Media.", vers. 2003, 18. February 2008 , 119.
13 Neil Leach, "9/11", diacritics 33.3/4 (2003): 75-92, 85.

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after they were taken. However, there was a discrepancy "between mediation and visceral reality"14. The events seemed unreal, an impression which was reinforced by the fact that one saw them on the television. To many people, the events seemed like a Hollywood film. Houen quotes Zizek:
The Real which returns has the status of a(nother) semblance: precisely because it is real, that is, on account of its traumatic / excessive character, we are unable to integrate it into (what we experience as) our reality, and we are therefore compelled to experience it as a nightmarish apparition.15
Here, the traumatic character of the 9/11 attacks becomes clear: the event is too big, too violent, too raw to accept it as reality. This is, as indicated before, only reinforced by the circumstance that, though not physically present at the site, through the live mediation, one has the feeling of being actually there. The principle of reality is lost.
I will now investigate in further detail the attacks of 9/11 as images16. Images can be traumatic in themselves, according to Adi Drori-Avraham, who cites Roland Barthes: "The traumatic image offers no values, no knowledge."17 The traumatic image is so violently shocking (as is true of the images of 9/11) that nothing can be said about it. There we see a delay in response typical for trauma: the reaction does not take place immediately, but is delayed. The events are not considered real, and therefore they do not exist. A meaning has not yet been attached to the occurrence. In critical theory, images have already been considered as "wounds", conjuring a "shock effect". Trauma itself has been pondered the prime motivation and subject of photography18. Depicting trauma, images can reproduce this experience.
Another important feature of trauma is, as I have explained before, the repetition of the underlying event. This can truly be applied to the images of 9/11. The footage from the Towers, especially those of the second plane hitting the South Tower and the collapse of both towers, have been repeated over and over again in a loop, "[their] repetition [was] the symbol of the event"19. The repetition did not only keep the wound open, but at the same time served as a means to try to master the situation. Moreover, they function as the background to the creation of (a new) identity20 and the eventual overcoming of the trauma21. On a different level, they also appeal to a darker side of the human mind, a pleasure from the fact that the events are real. This, I interpret, however, is not so much an evil trait, but also serves as a kind of self-protection ­ "thank God it′s not me".
At the time of the attacks, their background was yet completely unknown. The viewers had to try to put them into context on their own. As not accepting the pictures as real, though, the viewers are somehow also repelled from the depicted event. This also serves as a mechanism of self-protection, consequently also delaying the process of getting over the event itself. Globalization and media in general draw the spectators

^{14 Alex Houen, "Novel Spaces and Taking Place(s) in the Wake of September 11", Studies in the Novel 36.1 (2004): 419-437, 419.
15 Houen 419.
16 The term "image", as it is used here, means photographs as well as filmic footage.
17 Adi Drori-Avraham, "September 11th and the Mourning After: Media Narrating Grief", Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 20.3 (2006): 289-297, 282.
18 Lieberman 89.
19 Timm Knudsen 120.
20 Leach 77.
21 Leach 85.}

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closer together and thus narrows the space between "us" und "them". The immediacy of the events happening make the viewers feel as if they were actually there22.
As said before, the events of trauma repeat themselves in the mind of the affected person again and again. The images "burn" themselves into the mind, acting like a flashbulb "on the `photosensitive′ plate of our minds"23.
The need to come to terms with the events through their repetition is also expressed by literature and films that have emerged after the attacks. While some of these media deal with the repetition of the event or its reenactment, they can be considered as an attempt to cope with the attacks and eventually attribute meaning to them, to renegotiate and trying to make sense of them. Besides, they resound the feeling that the attacks were not real in the first place. Turning "fictitious reality" into "reality fiction" is thus another way of interpret the events.

^{22 Leach 85.
23 Leach 75.}