Closing an Emptiness

No one likes the idea of emptiness; whether it comes in the form of a person, a birthday card, or a space in the sky, no one enjoys it. No one wants to open a birthday card and find it empty, or to look up into the sky and see nothing. People long for something to fill that emptiness, to replace it. They want money or a check, or a gift card inside that birthday card. However sometimes what replaces it is worse than the original emptiness. A person would rather have an empty card than a card with a savings bond in it, or with a gift card to a seafood restaurant when he has seafood allergies. Although many characters long for fulfillment of the emptiness where the Twin Towers once stood, Egan shows by the end of A Visit from the Goon Squad that the emptiness was better than the end result because it symbolized freedom as opposed to entrapment the characters felt at the end.

At the beginning of the novel, Sasha, the former assistant of big-time music producer Bennie Salazar turned petty thief, goes on a date with Alex. On their walk back, she lets the readers in on the fact that she chose the location of their date out of habit, because its proximity to Bennie’s record label where she had worked. However, the chapter then goes on to say “But she hated the neighborhood at night without the World Trade Center, whose blazing freeways of light had always filled her with hope” (Egan 12). She misses the World Trade Center. In a flashback in the next chapter told from Bennie’s point of view, she comments on the emptiness where the towers once stood.
“It’s incredible,” Sasha said, “how there’s just nothing there.” Astounded Bennie turned to her…Sasha was looking downtown, and he followed her eyes to the empty space where the Twin Towers had been. “There should be something, you know?” she said, not looking at Bennie. “Like an echo. Or an outline”…she kept looking south, as if it were a problem her mind couldn’t solve. (Egan 36-37)
The emptiness bothers Sasha; she feels as if something needs to be there, to replace it. The absence of the Twin Towers bothers other characters as well. Jules, Bennie’s brother-in-law, also does not like the fact that the Towers no longer exist. He rants to Stephanie, his sister and Bennie’s wife, “‘I go away for a few years and the whole fucking world is upside down,’ Jules said angrily. ‘Buildings are missing. You get strip-searched every time you go to someone’s office…What the f***!’” (Egan 123). In the aftermath of September 11th, they have a hard time adjusting to the emptiness left by the attacks.

In the last chapter of the novel, Alex, Sasha’s date from the beginning of the book, reappears. He tells his story of the future, beyond the years directly after September 11th and the destruction of the World Trade Center, and time has filled that emptiness Sasha and Jules despised. But, he does not enjoy that fulfillment. His family’s apartment used to have a clear view of the Empire State Building, but then
…the squat building their own overlooked had been bought by a developer who planned to raze it and build a skyscraper that would seal off their air and light…And now, two years later, the skyscraper had at last begun to rise, a fact that filled Alex with dream and doom but also a vertiginous of sweetness-every instant of warm sunlight through their three east-facing windows felt delicious, and this sliver of sparkling night, which for years he’d watched from a cushion propped against the sill…now appeared agonizingly beautiful, a mirage. (Egan 314)
Alex cherishes the emptiness, which allowed the sun to come through and the night to appear visible; he cherishes what Sasha hated. He and his wife and daughter go to watch the sunset, and he comments, “She ran toward the iron fence along the wall’s outer edge, always jammed at this hour with people who probably (like Alex) had barely noticed the sunset before the wall went up. Now they craved it” (Egan 323). Once again, the wall fills an emptiness, and Alex realizes now that he misses that emptiness. The helicopters constantly fly over the city, to protect it and he could not stand the noise, “but over time he had gotten used to it” (Egan 330). Alex loathes the closing in on the emptiness. He feels trapped. The emptiness symbolized freedom, he slowly loses that freedom.
One can see that although characters such as Sasha and Jules do not welcome the emptiness and long for its fulfillment, by the end of the book, characters like Alex long for its return. One can conclude that Egan portrays this as if to say be careful what one wishes for, as if to point out the flaws in longing for fulfillment. Although many characters long for fulfillment of the emptiness where the Twin Towers once stood, Egan shows by the end of A Visit from the Goon Squad that the emptiness was better than the end result because it symbolized freedom as opposed to entrapment the characters felt at the end. The empty birthday card may not be so bad. After all, a person would rather get an empty one than one with a fake one hundred dollar bill in it. Egan helped show that sometimes, nothing is better than something, and sometimes emptiness is better than closure.