Don DeLillo’s Falling Man as Cultural Trauma Fiction

Abstract The sociological concept of cultural trauma provides a useful lens for understanding large-scale traumatic events and their literary legacies because this concept recognizes the historical, social, and cultural aspects of trauma rather than limiting its scope to the experiences of individuals or small collectives. The terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 initiated widespread trauma through the spectacle of the planes colliding with the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Literature after 9/11 is both a product of cultural trauma and a means of exploring the profound effects of that trauma. Some 9/11 novels are part of a subgenre I call Cultural Trauma Fiction, which depicts and explores the effect of a large-scale traumatic event on a culture. Texts within this subgenre represent multiple identities and perspectives, engage with cultural concerns about memorializing the trauma, consider the ethics of representing that trauma through different media, and advance counternarratives that challenge dominant government or media narratives about the trauma. Don DeLillo’s Falling Man constitutes a work of Cultural Trauma Fiction in that its structure and narrative strategies move beyond the scope of the novel’s plot, offering insight into the cultural response to 9/11 and countering hegemonic narratives. Works of Cultural Trauma Fiction like Falling Man highlight the collective hidden transcript of traumatic events and challenge official narratives that oversimplify cultural traumas. Falling Man complicates and enriches the collective understanding of 9/11 by challenging, revising, and reconstructing its cultural narratives.