Baudrillard grapples with this in his theoretical writings. It is in this world that “images, signs, and codes engulf objective reality; signs become more real than reality and stand in for the world they erase” (Wilcox, 346- 47). This pseudo-world of simulacra and the perceived loss of the real in DeLillo’s novels obstruct his characters’ search for themselves.
DeLillo’s communication is a kind of haphazard game, and language is the playing field on which opposing forces clash--harmony and chaos, rules and play. The game of language depends on a balance with play—that is, with chaos, multiplicity, and disruption. Meaning in language doesn't come from a one-to-one correspondence, but from a play of differences involving syntheses and referrals that preclude simple meaning; consequently, words do not reflect reality so much as they create it. But DeLillo focuses on language not only as mediation, the cause of our corruption but also as our only path back to innocence.
Language is a mystery, finally, because of its two natures, sacred and common. Like the self, language has dimensions that seem to transcend even while it remains a common, corruptible medium. In one sense, DeLillo's novels seem to present a search for a language above corruption, above plurality, an Ur-language. But the logo-centric quest for a single truth, the original logos, leads only to deception and destruction. In truth, there is no Ur-language because of the nature of language, its dependence on a play of differences for meaning: like our apprehension of reality and of ourselves, meaning in language will always be a haphazard affair, elusive, slippery, uncertain. At the end of his search, Bucky Wunderlick knows that he will come back, though he doesn't know what sound to make. DeLillo's choice is apparent from his first novel, Americana, the ostensible autobiography of David Bell. The difference between Bell's autobiography and DeLillo's novel is that while Bell strives for objectivity and the appearance of autobiography, in the spirit of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, DeLillo emphasizes the inherent deception in language and in narrative form. DeLillo, like the hidden narrator in End Zone, takes it upon himself to 'unbox the lexicon for all eyes to see' (113). He cannot stand outside language, but he can emphasize rather than rely on language's deceptions, he can point out the contradictions, the illusions, and the mediation. He cannot stand beyond the screen, but he can point there, to 'that other world, unsyllabled, snow lifted in the wind, swirling up, massing within the lightless white day, falling toward the sky' (Americana 189). He cannot solve the mysteries he confronts, but lie can use language to define, without reduction or disguise, the true wonder of the world—and of ourselves.
Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007) is a very popular and critical novel of the period. Although 9/11 is implicitly discussed, debated, and analyzed but still in subtle discourse and narrative became a very horrifying attempt in history that causes an extreme sense of fear and trauma. The Post-9/11 fictions cover the insidious spectrum of terrorism of the twenty-first century, as DeLillo’s Falling Man creates a narrative of trauma caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. DeLillo tries to historicize the terrorism and terrorist attacks through his novel Falling Man which intensively and extensively tries to depict the trauma and fear. The post-9/11 traumatic condition of the people has been portrayed through the protagonist of the
novel Keith Neudecker. DeLillo artistically symbolized the trauma of 9/11 through Richard Drew’s photo entitled ‘Falling Man’ which is still an image of a person falling down from the World Center Tower. The symbolic representation of the falling man reminds the attacks. The traumatic imagery of the falling man is applied to construct the narrative of post-9/11 trauma. DeLillo applies an orientalist approach to historicizing 9/11 and its trauma through avant-garde art in Falling Man. Joanne Faulkner, implicitly argues that the depiction of traumatic images helps to construct the narrative. In her study “The Innocence of Victimhood Versus the ‘Innocence of Becoming’: Nietzsche, 9/11, and the ‘Falling Man.”, Faulkner observes in her study that:
…images played a major role in enabling certain mainstream media groups in the United States to reconstruct a narrative concerning their particular place in the world and with respect to each other: a narrative about national character and identity, hope, fear, and desire. (67)
DeLillo’s Falling Man depicts the characters who are survivors of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and who witnessed the attacks. Keith Neudecker is one of the survivors of the attacks. Lianne is the wife of Keith. The main story is interconnected to other stories that present global society. Globalization has reshaped the society of America as it is reflected in the American writings of the contemporary time. The novel includes characters from different parts of the world America, Arabs, and Europeans. DeLillo maintains the global theme of terrorism through which he has developed the narrative of trauma.
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DeLillo’s Falling Man is a post-9/11 narrative that reflects the experiences of victims, full of trauma and fear. The novel does not only narrate the experience of 9/11 but also the post-9/11 condition of victims which also is painful and traumatic. The novel revisits and reminds the events that left a dark memory in Americans' minds. It tries to depict the condition of the victims and American society of the post-9/11 period. The novel describes how the event has changed the life of American society. Although the event took place in 2001 DeLillo’s Falling Man shows how the historical events caused the social, political, personal, and psychological condition of American society. DeLillo uses his historical narrative of 9/11 through an imaginative victim of 9/11 who witnesses the attacks. Falling Man appears to be historical fiction of the twenty-first century that provides a narrative of trauma as developed in the victims who witnessed the terrorist attacks.
DeLillo’s Falling Man perpetuates 9/11 as the dividing lines of differences between the East and West. Moreover, Islam and the West, show only the traumatic condition one-sided to the West. The novel applies in tempting a wide spectrum of the West narrative of post-9/11 trauma and chaos in the global society, involving the orientalist approach of the narrative. The novel portrays the fall of the World Trade Center as the fall of America and American that caused mental trauma and fear among the Western people. Linda S. Kauffman critically argued in her study 'World Trauma Center.' She observes that:
…Falling Man, trauma makes time stand still; one arrested moment stands in metonymically for the whole horror. The title alludes to Richard Drew's famous newspaper photograph of the man falling from the north tower, head first. The photo juxtaposes the World Trade Center's vertical massiveness with the puniness of the figure plunging to his death. DeLillo's title becomes a symbol of the post-9/11 human condition. Filled with dread of an impending doom that has been momentarily arrested. (Kauffman 652)
DeLillo also depicts Muslim characters in the novel. Amir and Hammad are assumed to be one of the terrorists who attacked the twin towers. He correlates Islam and terrorism in the novel as he develops his narrative of trauma caused by a Muslim hijacker and a terrorist who plotted the attacks. DeLillo constructs his narrative of terrorism through his oriental lances of looking at the East, Arabs, Islam, and Muslims. He develops his idea of terrorism in the novel through his prejudicially and biased religious, racial, the regional proliferation of identity.
While discussing the post 9/11 narrative, it revisits the place, events, and trauma.
DeLillo attempts to remind us not only of the horrible history of the fall of the Twin Towers or the falling man but also of the post-9/11 traumatic condition of the victims. The narrative of 9/11 not only provides the traumatic history but also the consequences of 9/11 which caused and affected the lives of others. Furthermore, he, intensively and extensively, dramatizes his narrative style to present the events to regenerate the fear, depicting Islam and Arabs as causes of the events. The narrative of 9/11 anticipates another subject of analysis stereotyping Islam, distortion of the facts, misrepresentation of Arabs, perpetuating the idea of terrorism and terrorism, propagating hate, and misguiding the truth. The orientalist prejudicially and purposefully maligns the image of Islam and the East, always trying to correlate terrorism and Islam. The continuous depiction of the falling man in media and literature also generates and intensifies Islamophobia and xenophobia across the globe. The existing tradition of the orientalist narrative of 9/11 dominates in Western media, art, and literature as Islam and the East are misrepresented through the West. DeLillo’s Falling Man uses different images of 9/11 as it is reported by the media. Falling Man presents the idea of terrorism that caused the trauma in American society as an American narrative.
Don DeLillo’s Falling Man tries to depict terrifying conditions through the characters of the novel. The protagonist of the novel has faced many issues and problems of trauma after 9/11. However, DeLillo does not include the non-white people as the study of Schuster has observed. Schuster argues in his study that out of five have the symptoms of traumatic stress reaction after the 9/11 attacks. In the novel, DeLillo also traces the symptoms of post-9/11 trauma that changed the lives of the people. DeLillo in Falling Man delineates the psychological condition of the American people full of trauma and fear that created through the haunted imagery of falling man. However, the protagonist is not a falling man but rather a survivor of 9/11 whose life has been changed after the attack as he states, “These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after” (DeLillo, Falling Man, 138). Moreover, it seems that DeLillo chooses the title of the novel to aggravate his narrative to develop a cultural memory through the novel.
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