A Preliminary Observation of "The Falling Man" by Tom Junod

"The Falling Man" by Tom Junod is a controversial article about a picture of a man who jumped from the north tower during the attack of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The picture was captured by a photographer named Richard Drew who works for the Associated Press. This photograph was one of the most famous of history as well as the most painful.


I like the way Junod sorted each section of his article. He starts by describing the photograph itself in very good detail and also adds the opinions of what others thought of the photograph to depict other points of view that he later brings up in the article.Then tells us a little bit about the photographer and quite a bit about what the photographer went through that day (9/11) and how it was that the photograph was chosen.


Junod starts to talk about the jumpers themselves as well. This part of his article had me crying as I was reading it. I don't know if it was due to the memory of that day and all the horror that I saw on the news or if it was the article itself, but I do know that it affected me in many ways. My feelings of disbelief as I watched the north tower, in smoke and flames. As I watched some of the jumpers before the south tower was hit which had me crying wondering what might be going through their minds before they jumped as well as on their way down. I watched as the second tower was hit, with a strong feeling of horror. This was nothing "like a movie," as Junod claims some of the witness stated. This was reality, this was really happening, this was the unforeseen worse case scenario. Then the towers collapsed and all that was left was extreme fear. I remember that was when I had to drink myself to sleep because I was restless with the chaos and trauma I had just witnessed. All of these feelings came back to me as read this part of the article.


Junod then talks about Peter Cheney who was given the assignment of finding out the identity of "The Falling Man." The article is mostly about this. The search leads to many different family's and many different people are involved in trying to figure out who he is, although nobody really succeeded. Junod definitely provoked questions to his audience, for example: I still want to know who the falling man really is! In his writing it almost seems like he is about to reveal the naked truth.What he does instead  is end the article with a metaphor of  what he believes "The Falling Man" represents. Teaser Alert!