After (Expository Essay)

After

One sunny Tuesday morning, four separate airplanes crashed onto American soil, into symbolic buildings, killing thousands, forever changing life as we knew it. Terrifying and at first inexplicable, the terrorist attacks carried out by the militant extremist group Al-Qaeda sent the nation into a tailspin, provoking massive changes in American society, politics, and religion. In his novel The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta explores a similar cataclysm with the Rapture-like premise of the story: one October day, two percent of the world’s population vanishes in what is known as the Departure. The events of the book follow that of the Garvey family in small town Mapleton, New York, all of whom are coping with the horror and bewilderment of the Departure in different ways. The aftermath of the Departure in Perrotta’s story evokes haunting parallels to the religious and secular changes in American life following the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Perrotta’s comparison of the two explores how the population of a country, or even a small town, reacts to a calamity as petrifying as a terrorist attack and how they process the trauma of what they perceive to be an incomprehensible event.

The exploration starts from the get-go. Told from the point of view of the Garveys’ elder son, Tom, Perrotta delves into a comparison between the Departure and 9/11: “The coverage felt different from that of September 11th, when the networks had shown the burning towers over and over. October 14th was more amorphous, harder to pin down…” (Perrotta 51). The chaos immediately following September 11th, while the government scrambled to evacuate potential targets from the path of terrorists (9/11 Memorial) did concentrate itself in major urban areas; with the Departure, the whole world inexplicably loses friends, family, and loved ones. While the events themselves are dissimilar in scale, they both provide the same broad effects upon the populace of the United States.

In the wake of 9/11, the country recoiled from a massive loss of human life and integrity, as well as the destruction of symbolic buildings with the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, both paragons of national pride and security. In response to the attacks, Congress passed the Patriot Act, a counterterrorism law that broadened governmental interference and surveillance that “quickly became shorthand for government abuse and overreaching.” (Liptak 1). This law, only somewhat effective and a catalyst for questionable governmental and judiciary procedures, came on the heels of President George W. Bush’s declaration of a “War on Terror,” inciting a continuous conflict between U.S. troops and insurgents in Middle Eastern countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Perrotta alludes to this sort of war-mongering reaction when Tom Garvey meets a soldier on an eastbound bus: “Instead of one big new war, there was just the usual bunch of crappy little ones...A few months ago, the President had announced a big troop escalation.” (Perrotta 169). 9/11 and the Departure both incite an aggressive combativeness in the government, often backed by citizens like the soldier and his brother, who swore to enlist together right after October 14th.

While he does pay tribute to the reactionary response of the government, Perrotta veers into a different direction in terms of religious attitudes following such a far-reaching event. He creates several different semi-religious, semi-cultish followings that permeate his American society: the Guilty Remnant, who refuse to speak and believe that “the old world is gone. It disappeared three years ago...we belong to the new world;” the constituents of the Healing Hug Movement, by which a man styling himself as Holy Wayne takes people’s pain away with a hug and who has a penchant for young Asian girls; and the Barefoot people, a group reminiscent to the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s who believe the only sin is misery (Perrotta 200, 73-75, 170). While Perrotta diversifies the spirituality of the nation, the contrary was true for the United States following 9/11. In a sociological study, Jeremy Uecker examined the spirituality of young adults following 9/11 and concluded they “exhibited only a modest, short-lived increase in religious salience and prayer.” (Uecker).

Alongside a comparatively smaller religious resurgence, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 promoted interfaith movements amongst the younger generations of Americans, a movement whose popularity one interfaith leader attributes to the fact that “9/11 showed the destructive potential of any exclusive claims to religious truth.” (Blake 3). Perrotta picks up on this facet of the attacks and expands upon it in the form of Reverend Matt Jamison, who loses the trust and love of his family and community, in order to prove that the Departure was not the Rapture by publishing a trashy editorial on the “sinners” who disappeared (Perrotta 16-17).

The strongest point of concurrence between the after effects of September 11th and those of the fictional October 14th is in the impact upon those who lost a loved one or friend. The oral accounts of the family members of those who lost a piece of themselves forever on 9/11, a piece that would remain gone in spite of the stitching of grief and time, batter and enlighten the listener’s emotions. David Beamer, whose son Todd helped overpower the hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93, preventing the further loss of life likely planned by the terrorists, recounts his last meeting with his son and his reaction to September 11th with sadness and pride (9/11 Memorial). Beamer describes the last words the telephone operator heard on the other end of the line; the words spoken by his son: “Let’s roll,” leading the brave fliers of United 93 to overpower the hijackers. Nora Durst, the character who lost her entire family on October 14th, gives a speech ringing with the grief, sadness, and longing that most of the family left damaged on 9/11 recall in their histories (Perrotta 27). The sense of individual loss within the great scale of such a tragedy is where Perrotta captures the poignance of the two national upheavals together --  the sudden and untimely disappearance of a loved one that tears at the human psyche and its connection to the communal loss of a mass event.

The irreparable tragedy of September 11th running concurrent to Perrotta’s October 14th makes for a wholehearted and interesting endeavor to explain what we cannot ever be sure of. Whatever drives human nature, whatever “higher power” manipulates human existence -- some human experiences are inexplicable. Perrotta’s invention of a Sudden Departure, one so similar to 9/11, argues that those left behind will never entirely understand why these things happen, even with logical explanations from bipartisan groups or international investigations. And maybe, that’s just life: things just happen, and there is no why. There is only what can be sure of: life, no matter how brief, is a treasure, to be appreciated by those lucky enough to continue to live it.