The Memory of Things

Terrorists who were militants associated with the extremist Al-Qaeda group hijacked four American commercial planes on the morning of September 11, 2001, intending to use them in suicide attacks. In New York City, at 8:46 am, American Airlines Flight 11 was piloted by the hijackers into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and United Airlines Flight 175 was flown into the South Tower at 9:03 am.

After the first plane hit, many people in the city and those watching news reports around the country thought a terrible accident had occurred; once the second plane hit, though, most considered it evident that it was a terrorist attack on the nation. At 9:37 am, American Airlines Flight 77 hit the southwest wall of the Pentagon near Washington, DC. The Federal Aviation Authority then ordered all planes in the air to land and all other flights grounded. Passengers on the fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, tried to overpower their hijackers; that plane crashed into a field near the small town of Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania, about 80 miles from Pittsburgh. At 9:59 am, the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, followed by the North Tower at 10:28 due to damage to the buildings’ structural components from the subsequent fires. Rescue efforts went on for days; recovery and removal of debris and remains took months. Almost 3,000 people were killed on September 11th, and countless others suffered from physical injuries and emotional trauma in the ensuing years, including many rescue workers at Ground Zero in New York.

Details in The Memory of Things are directly connected to the events of that day. Kyle indicates that he saw the South Tower collapse from the window of his school, Stuyvesant High School, a math and science charter school in Manhattan several blocks from the World Trade Center. As the story opens, he walks with thousands of other New Yorkers southeast across the Brooklyn Bridge when another massive explosion indicates the second tower’s collapse just as he meets the girl and brings her to safety in his apartment in Brooklyn Heights, south of the bridge. Kyle later hears about the Pentagon attack and Flight 93 the way the rest of the nation did that day, on TV news reports. Kyle also mentions the impromptu “message board” and makeshift memorial items on the Promenade, a walkway along the edge of Brooklyn with a view of downtown Manhattan’s skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge. This site includes a photographer’s pictures (warning: images of explosions and fire) taken the morning of September 11th; they show the view of Manhattan from the Promenade and the mass exodus of people from Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge.