Document Type
Article
Abstract
Don DeLillo's 'Falling Man' alludes with subtle indirection to the Babel myth, without endorsing a crude reading of the fall of the towers as justifiable punishment. The apparent chronology of the biblical myth itself, with its strong distinction between before and after the building and abandoning of the towers, is already scrambled by repetitions and prefigurings in the Authorized Version (King James) narrative. DeLillo also suggests that linguistic coherence was absent before 9/11, so that what has happened since is coherent with what came before. Often, the protagonists' comments cannot be clearly defined as before or after 9/11. Names are especially unreliable, but their confusion also precludes any form of monotheism becoming established. The novel does not endorse 9/11 as an absolutely life-changing event, but it does not demean its tragic dimension: the disaster brings out what is already there and further expresses situations latent in the culture of the homeland. There never was an original innocence to be lost; DeLillo's figures are already caught in a cycle of loss and repetition when 9/11 interrupts their lives.
Repository Citation
Simpson, David. "A Confusion of Tongues." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 2, 2011, pp. 1–8. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss2/8