September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001, matters in the novel less as a directly narrated event than as a historical rupture whose effects persist in private choices and public arguments. In its aftermath, Tony Kafka’s instinct was to return permanently to the United States, while a later conversation with Joe Proffitt turned to the responsibilities of being American beyond making money. The date thus connects political uncertainty to a family’s unresolved question of where home lies.

Historical Moment and Conversation

By the end of 2001, after the initial shock had begun to settle, Tony and Joe had talked about everything because, as Tony recalled, certainties had disappeared. He rejected the suggestion that Joe had simply returned to business as usual: Joe felt things strongly too, Tony said, though they did not meet face to face often. Their exchange locates the attacks within an unsettled period rather than treating them as a passing reference; the event had opened questions that remained active in their personal and political lives.

Tony’s Divided Allegiance

The September that followed the attacks, Tony felt an instinctive pull to go home to the United States for good. He stayed in Britain because Helen Dunn was three months pregnant and he understood how she would feel about such a move. His decision therefore arose not from a loss of attachment to America but from a competing commitment to his wife and their expected child. In the later reflection, after the twins’ birth, the possibility that Tony hoped Helen might agree to move west again becomes newly pressing.

Business, Politics, and Home

The date’s political afterlife is also present in an argument about American arms exports. The text Tony reads rejects the old calculation that an enemy’s enemy could be treated as a friend, insisting instead that those who send weapons across a line must know which side they support. In that argument, the Ashur-Proffitt Corporation’s commercial motive is no longer sufficient. The passage gives the post-September 11 debate a concrete stake: business decisions are measured against political allegiance and responsibility.

That public question converges with the couple’s private disagreement over belonging. Tony had admitted that he felt foreign in Britain; Helen, despite her family’s long American ancestry, could summon no place in the United States with an emotional pull beyond a tiny plot of land. She regards her present home as sacred, especially after the previous night, and knows Tony will have to understand that. September 11, 2001, therefore marks a pressure that neither ends with the attacks nor resolves in a shared destination: Tony’s imagined return and Helen’s rootedness remain in tension.