Falling Man Summary

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: A psychoanalytic Study of DeLillo’s Falling Man
T. Ganga Parameswari,
Research Scholar, Asst.Professor,
Department of English, V. V. Vanniaperumal College for Women,
Virudhunagar.
Abstract
This article discusses Don DeLillo’s Falling Man as a novel that explores the post traumatic stress disorder, a psychological shock and its effect after the attack on the Twin Tower on September 2011. People witnessed the attack. Media telecasted the attack immediately and repeatedly. It created a sensation throughout the world. People started questioning their beliefs. This article explores the mental state of the characters, Keith

The cover page of one of his novels, Under World published in 1997 has a picture of a black bird flying toward one of the Towers. DeLillo in his essay, “In the Ruins of the Future” writes, “When the towers fell, the moment was so vast and terrible that it was outside imagining even as it happened…. The event itself has no purchase on the mercies of analogy or simile….there is something empty in the sky” (39).
Falling Man is published in the year 2007. Falling Man pictures today’s world as a mixture of chaos and disorder, which end only in rubble. It records the experiences of the survivors of the demolition of the World Trade Center, back grounding the couple Keith and Lianne. The novel discusses the violent nature of the terrorist portrayed through the mass media. DeLillo’s narrative examines the possibilities of reinventing individual identity as well as the tendency of individuals to construct their identities through a group

He attempts to establish his identity but turns ineffective. He has become a constructed human being almost alienated, unable to connect or be linked with others, disconnected from reality, suffers a lot, not knowing what to do. It is written thus about him: “Nothing seemed familiar, being here, in a family again, and he felt strange to himself, or always had, but it was different now because he was watching” (65). Keith’s condition is equal to Alzheimer patients who are attended by Lianne. Their mental deterioration emphasizes the importance of healthy memory for an individual to sustain his identity. Alzhiemer patients’ minds are, “beginning to slide away from the friction that makes an individual possible”