Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

Department of English
Course: Contemporary American Novel
Mentor: prof. Stipe Grgas
Student: Selmir Hasani

The differences and similarities in DeLillos Falling Man

and In the Ruins of the Future

9/11 was an event that changed US history. Its occurrence marks the
breaking point in contemporary USA; it shattered its authoritarian image as well
as its national and global identity. A catastrophe of similar significance and terror
has never occurred on American soil, and some would argue that it returned
America to history, exposing it once again to vulnerability. As such, the event
was globally covered and shocked the entire world. Consequently, the publishing
industry has seen ample works concerning and dealing with 9/11. DeLillo, as a
New Yorker, naturally took this event personally and wrote about it, in his own
manner, in his novel Falling Man and a magazine-published essay In the Ruins of
the Future. Both works deal with the event itself and its repercussions in a
different way, but there are also a number of similarities.
A notable thing is that the works are different in terms of portraying the
terrorists. In his essay, DeLillo paints a picture of almost mechanized, heartless
people who arent able to see the humanity around them and who are unable to
be affected even to the slightest by a sight of a woman pushing a stroller. They
answer only to God, and for them this isnt just payback, this is a matter of
heaven and hell. In Falling Man, there are several chapters dedicated to the
terrorists it describes how they perceive their inevitable death and, in
particular, follows the inner struggles of Hammad, a terrorist who oftentimes
doubted the cause of their plan. They are portrayed as human beings, with
needs, opinions and, initially, somewhat conflicting views. Another distinction is
that the characters in the novel are completely fictional, whereas the essay has a
rather personal note, When the second tower fell, my heart fell with it. I called
Marc, who is my nephew, on his cordless. The characters DeLillo is describing
are in fact real and related to him, and were residents in a building extremely
close to the towers when the planes struck, thus the essay has more of an
emphatic feel to it. Although it has other focus points, the essay is more concrete
in terms of dealing with personal feelings, and one cant help but notice the
authors presence in it. The novel is a work of fiction, and there arent sentiments
expressed that could be linked directly to the author. Additionally, In the Ruins of
the Future, the characters and their interrelationships arent necessarily in the
centre of focus like in the novel, but more the socio-economic and global
elements of the climate at the time.

The two works have also several elements in common. The chronology of
both works isnt necessarily progressive and linear. The author often skips from
one point in time to the other, depending on what he wants to emphasize or
highlight. The ending of the novel actually takes the reader back to the start, or
rather, even before the start of the book, where Hammad is in the plane and
Keith is trying to get out of the burning tower. In the essay the notion of time is
expressed explicitly, with sentences temporally marked six days after the
attacks or ten days later and even going farther back in time -Eleven years
ago, during the engagement in the Persian Gulf, people had trouble separating
the war from coverage of the war. There are also quite similar descriptions of the
surroundings and people when the plains hit the towers; large crowds gathering,
police squads and troops, people in suits, women losing shoes, scattered papers
and office paraphernalia, etc. The impossibility of grasping the shock and the
catastrophic proportions of the event is also apparent in these works, especially
the novel where the characters cant seem to grasp the enormity and significance
of the attack at first, specifically those who were in it - they experience some sort
of delayed after shock. In the essay, theres even a passage that says Karen felt a
surreal relief when she found out that a plane hit the tower, and not a bomb,
which is also an irrational reaction, but understandably quite normal under the
circumstances.
The essay could be read as an anticipation of the novel. I think that
DeLillos own nearly-tragic family situation most definitely spurred him to create
a fictional novel where the psychological and human side of the event would be
the main focus point. The style of writing is also very similar and is probably the
best indicator of this; alongside DeLillos typical philosophical sentences about
the contemporary world, the chronology of the event itself is described really
fast, in abrupt sentences, but with much detail, intensity and vividness. One cant
help but feel they were actually there.