Towers Falling

The novel opens with Pop’s nightmares. Dèja’s narration immediately translates them into what they mean for her. She says, “Pop groans. He’s having bad dreams again. I hear Ma trying to comfort him. My little sister, Leda, squirms. I whisper, ‘Hush. Sleep,’ and tuck the sheet beneath her chin” (1). Dèja doesn’t overtly connect her father’s symptoms with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and begins the novel resenting his seeming inability to help improve his family’s situation. However, as readers, we can recognize that many of his symptoms are the result of suffering from trauma, and hints in the storyline foreshadow Dèja’s ultimately discovering that his PTSD stems from September 11th, especially as Pop becomes more vocal about not wanting Dèja to learn about it in school.

His symptoms and their connection to 9/11 become more apparent when Dèja brings it up over a weekend, and “Pop’s face crumbles” immediately (45). He holds his head, and it becomes a “[r]uined weekend” in which Dèja must spend the whole day outside watching her siblings because Pop must stay in bed (41). Dèja doesn’t understand Pop’s behavior because she doesn’t yet know what happened on that day.

Finally, she realizes the link between Pop’s symptoms and the time of year, as she thinks about how Pop becomes sadder each fall: “I stop, catch my breath. No, every September—Pop gets worse. Why didn’t I connect it sooner?” (170). This brings the evidence together for the reader to confirm that Pop’s symptoms must come from his experience in the tower. Ultimately, this realization also helps Dèja recognize that Pop is being brave as he tries to muster through telling her his story. Knowing this and hearing him talk about what happened to him that day, Dèja thinks, “I never should’ve been angry at Pop” (218). It connects her back to the theme of not making assumptions about someone’s lived experience and shows how her empathy for what he must live with every day helps resolve the tension between Dèja and Pop.

The idea of “home” and “homeless” is repeated throughout the novel, and it naturally plays an exceptionally important role because Dèja is homeless. As a result, Towers Falling pushes its readers through Dèja to think more critically about what “home” means. At first, the conflict seems to be that Dèja doesn’t have a home, which is why her and her family are living in Avalon. She wants nothing more than to be an adult: “I won’t have to live in a shelter. Or go to another new school. I’ll be on my own, taking care of myself. I won’t ever get evicted” (6). She wants to have a stable home where she can live independently.

However, Dèja’s conception of home shifts when she shows Miss Garcia the paper dolls that Ray cut out. Miss Garcia tells her, “He must be very smart—he’s the only one who really made home” (55). This compliment to Ray prompts Dèja to realize that “[h]ome is more than a place,” which becomes her thesis for her essay about what home means (59). The lesson pushes her to value her family more and to value that sense of home.

From there, the image of her inner circles of family and friends then grows to be encapsulated by bigger ideas of community: a city, state, and nation. At the novel’s end, Dèja sees home in many different places: at the school, with Ben and Sabeen, with her family, and within America as a whole. She finishes the story by writing that “America is one big family, one big home. When the towers fell, I think everybody did their best to help and be strong” (221). Her conception of home by this point has expanded to assist her in processing the effects of 9/11, which means considering the US to be a type of home.