Before the Fall

“It is the ocean he is painting tonight, stroke by stroke, like Harold and his purple crayon, drawing a balloon as he falls.”

Hawley draws a parallel between Scott’s art and his current circumstances, alluding to a famous children’s book in which a boy uses art to create his life, moment-by-moment. Similarly, Scott must use the physical act of brushstrokes/swimming strokes to create a reality in which he saves both his life and JJ’s. Later, he uses his literal art to save himself emotionally and psychologically.

“What happens when your life can't be translated into a linear narrative?”

As Scott tries to answer Gus’s questions, he is unable to construct a linear timeline of events. Instead, his memory is a series of scattered images in no particular order, “fireflies firing at random” (48). The memory lapses are unsettling since we measure time in a linear fashion and assume our memories are simply mental recordings of events as they happen. As Scott discovers, memory is imprecise and erratic, and the struggle to piece together a coherent narrative is an emotional and cognitive challenge.

“They were twenty-first-century newsmen, prisoners of the cycle. History had taught them to dig for scandal in the fringes of every fact.”

As head of ALC News, David Bateman redefines the role of a network news anchor. The 24-hour news cycle has been a reality since CNN pioneered the model in 1980, but David has the foresight to use it to his advantage, to feed the public appetite for content with scandal and opinion rather than straight reporting. The gamble proves hugely successful.

“But you and I know—there are no accidents.”

From his hospital bed, Scott watches Bill Cunningham spin conspiracy theories about the crash. A skilled rhetorician, Cunningham—“tie askew” to signal his dogged pursuit of the story—accomplishes two things here. He draws his audience into his inner circle by including them in the secret (with the tacit assumption that already understand); and he implies that nefarious forces—not chance—have brought the plane down. He perpetuates these unfounded theories as long as they bring in viewers.

“He had been young once and limitless, and then somehow his life became a foregone conclusion.”

Scott reflects on his youth and on what might have been. A once-promising artist, Scott suddenly finds himself in middle-age, never having reached the heights of success he imagined for himself. Instead, he is creatively blocked and compensates for his artistic frustration with alcohol misuse and a series of unsatisfying sexual affairs. Scott is confronted with the passage of time and the realization that youthful aspirations often collide head-on with life’s realities.

“The circus of it, the blood frenzy.”

As Scott prepares to leave the hospital, an army of press waits for him outside. With barely enough time to heal physically, he is not prepared to deal with the barrage of questions. Hawley makes two comparisons, neither favorable: the press is both a “circus,” a far cry from the sober image it likes to present, and a “blood frenzy,” an allusion to sharks tearing into their prey. Having just survived a horrific ordeal in the ocean—with sharks a very real possibility—the comparison is apt.

“In that moment, when gentle rocking turned into a cannonball ricochet, did she go from wife and mother, from sister or girlfriend, from daughter or paramour to refugee?”

The first painting in the narrative is of a train wreck—twisted metal, derailed cars, flames. In the midst of the carnage walks a single survivor, a woman, searching for something or someone. Hawley ponders that moment of transition, when a life can be irrevocably altered by a single, random act of violence; how a person’s identity can be ripped from them and replaced by something new: loss and grief.

“It is an incalculable tragedy, one that shows us the ultimate finiteness of human control over the universe, and the humbling power of collective death.”

Gus Franklin, who starts his job as a dispassionate analyst, becomes something else over the years: a philosopher pondering the meaning of death. Exposure to death, to its emotional ramifications, to its very human cost, gives Gus a “wisdom” and an insight he never had. He sees humanity in the context of a vast universe, one which cares not whether they live or die. That acknowledgment of insignificance is humbling, and Gus becomes a far more empathetic investigator because of it.

“But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself eventually creating the black hole that we know as wealth.”

Much of the narrative is dedicated to the examination of money, its privileges and pitfalls, and its anthropomorphosis as an almost living being capable of will and reproduction. Ben Kipling likens it to “the black vacuum of space” (125), and Layla Mueller imagines it as a gravitational force wherein money attracts more and more of itself, gathering mass and momentum until it becomes an uncontrollable force. These metaphors, however, are a privilege of the rich, who don’t have to worry about the next paycheck or the affordability of health care.

“‘The pressure brought to bear on a man just getting out of bed in the morning,’ he said. ‘Money is the cure. It's a friction reducer.’”

Ben Kipling sees the meaning and value of money as variable. In this case, it takes the prosaic worries out of the picture so he can focus on the important things: his job and acquiring more money. Although he values his wealth—his wife, Sarah, wishes he would stop bragging about it—that wealth comes with tremendous pressure, to keep it flowing, to maintain the right business connections, to grease the wheels of those connections to ensure repeat business. This is the real meaning of Ben’s life, and his wealth is the insurance that he can keep doing it.

“Everyone is from someplace. We all have stories, our lives unfolding along crooked lines, colliding in unexpected ways.”

As Sarah Kipling meets her daughter for lunch, Hawley compares her life to her cab driver’s—an immigrant barely eking out a living who paid a smuggler for citizenship documents. Life, Hawley implies, is capricious and unfair, and its divergent paths occasionally converge, allowing the social classes to glimpse each other’s existences for brief moments before spinning off into their own distinct orbits.

“As if the art of it, the expertise he’d accumulated, his love of the deal, of every new challenge, was valueless.”

While Ben can seem an unfeeling, greedy capitalist concerned only about money, Hawley gives him extra layers. Not anyone can do his job, after all; it involves a very particular set of skills he’s perfected over many years of practice. Dismissing those skills is just as insulting as if he were to dismiss Scott’s paintings, to ignore the years of time and effort he had devoted to his craft.

“We are all equal in the face of nature, she thought—which was, in and of itself, an idea born of luxury.”

As Sarah wanders through the farmers market, she sees in her fellow market patrons only a mutual love of nature—an egalitarianism in which class wars do exist. Hawley, however, argues that such thinking is itself a component of class warfare. Sarah, as she husks the corn and tastes the fresh berries, is blissfully unaware of her privilege, of the fact that farmers markets—and fresh food in general—are often beyond the economic reach of many people who are relegated to food deserts, to fast and processed food.

“‘Clearly he knows more than he's saying,’ Bill told the viewers at home.”

As Bill Cunningham casts doubt on Scott’s character, his seemingly innocuous comment carries a hidden rhetorical weight. His use of the word “clearly” implies that his statement is self-evident when in fact it is anything but. His strategy is to bypass scrutiny—his argument would never pass any journalistic test—and to pull viewers right along with him, viewers who, he knows, already want to agree with him and will forgive any logical fallacy of which he may be guilty.

“Some failed drunk hobnobbing with men of actual accomplishment, a hitchhiker on the bootstrap express.”

Cunningham’s attacks on Scott reveal more about himself than Scott. Knowing almost nothing substantial about Scott, he makes broad and inaccurate assumptions—that his entire identity is defined by his alcohol use disorder and sobriety, that art doesn’t constitute “accomplishment,” and that he is a parasite trying to take something he hasn’t earned. Scott has been sober for years, his art is recognized as significant by critics, and he doesn’t want any of JJ’s inheritance. Cunningham, however, has a platform on which to spread these lies, and Scott has no similar means of defense.

“By doing the impossible he—like Jack—proved that impossible is possible.”

Fame, Scott discovers, is arbitrary, but by doing something most people couldn’t dream of—swimming through the ocean with a dislocated shoulder and a young boy on his back—he has achieved that level of fame reserved for genuine heroes. Hawley meditates on the nature of celebrity, of what draws people to those few who demonstrate superhuman accomplishments. Scott’s humility makes him even more worthy in the public eye, a hero with the persona of an average man, a symbol that anyone can be a hero in the right circumstances.

“The whiteness of the apartment is an empty canvas, a place waiting for its occupant to decide how to live.”

The comparison of Layla’s white apartment to a blank canvas emphasizes Scott’s desperate need to create, to make something of his new, post-crash life. Scott uses his art to create his reality, and indeed, one night, in a frenzy of inspiration, he paints a mural on Layla’s wall.

“This is what motherhood was, one fear eclipsed by another.”

Maggie Bateman has all the money she could ever use, enough to send Rachel to the best schools and to hire the best nannies, but when Rachel’s nanny, Frankie, goes missing, Maggie can only define her maternal role in terms of “fear.” Later, when Rachel is kidnapped, that fear turns to despair and terror. The narrative frequently focuses on the dual nature of wealth, its advantages and disadvantages, and Rachel’s kidnapping falls squarely into the latter category.

“The universe is the universe, he thinks.”

When the press discovers Scott hiding out with Layla Mueller, he reflects on the unwanted transparency of his life, on who could have revealed his location. In the end, unable to process the absurdity of his situation, he resigns himself to it, although he’s not happy about it. It is simply an existential truth over which he has no control.

“To be a body man did not mean being in a state of constant alarm. In fact it was the opposite.”

The paradox of Gil Baruch’s job is that, while he must be on constant alert, that hyper-awareness is best maintained in a state of “tense passivity” in which he is aware and flexible to a shifting environment, yet not myopic. That myopia, he knows, can lead to selectiveness, focusing on one thing and missing another vital clue.

“Does television exist for us to watch, in other words, or do we exist to watch television?”

As Scott ponders the ever-vigilant news media, he wonders if the technology is a tool we control, or if it controls us. Hawley engages in the free will versus determinism debate which considers whether humans control their own lives or if their lives are controlled by outside forces. In this case, is television a tool for the distribution of information and entertainment, or has it become so ubiquitous that it controls our decisions?

“Where is the intersection between life and art?”

As Gus Franklin studies Scott’s paintings, looking for clues, he asks a very specific and variable question. Is there, in fact, any intersection between his art and his life, specifically some connection that might be a motivation? While Scott’s life has certainly informed his art, can any conclusions be drawn about his work and his actions? It’s a question that requires speculation and interpretation rather than a reliance on data and evidence.

“How to describe the things we see onscreen, experiences we have that are not ours?”

As the rescue divers enter the sunken fuselage, Gus watches, transfixed, pondering the strange disconnect between lived reality and reality on a TV screen. Scott experiences the same emotional distance watching footage of himself being interviewed, as if the person watching and the person being watched were two different people living two distinctly separate lives.