Levitating on the Border Line: An Analysis of Contested Space and Identity in Don Delillo’s Falling Man

Levitating On the Border Line: An Analysis of Contested Space and Identity in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man

Stephanie Johnson

64982044

11/30/2007

Eng 374C

M. Zeitlin

In Don DeLillo’s novel, Falling Man, he entices the reader into a disoriented state where images of life both before and after the events of September 11th, demonstrate various confused identities and imagined spaces. Through the eyes and minds of certain characters, DeLillo demonstrates the ease by which one’s comfort can easily be stripped away and furthermore, how the events and experiences encountered in life can drastically alter the spaces that were once so clearly defined. Whether old spaces are being destroyed or new one’s created, there is a sense in this novel of a constant search to find that which can no longer exist as it once was; there is a continual attempt to re-create the space that was once defined by particular memories, but also a further attempt to find new spaces that one can safely occupy with a new state of mind. Throughout this essay, one will provide an analysis of individual characters in an attempt to show how they relate through the occupation of similar spaces of transition.

Through the image of the disconnected individual juxtaposed against the collective image of the shared identity, DeLillo portrays people who are caught between different states of being and thus cannot be tied to any particular space in place and time. It is perhaps odd that although not the terrorist whose entire life is in preparation for death, Keith comes forth as the most unnerving of characters. He is an individual who after September 11th is desperate to re-gain some sense of certainty life. He first attempts this by instinctively returning to his wife and son, but soon realizes that in doing this he can never truly escape what he has experienced. September 11th has changed him internally and thus transformed the way in which he now encounters and perceives the world; his senses fall variable to a new mindset that has been shaped by a harsh new reality. Near the beginning of the novel, Keith is correcting his misspelled name on letters he receives in the mail. Grammar exists so that language can maintain its uniformity and shared understanding over time, and one might argue that Keith corrects the letters in his name for the same purpose,