Healing Invisible Wounds: Don Delillo’s Falling Man and the Recovery of Trauma

Abstract

9/11 has not only caused dramatic, social, and political changes in the US history but also created a literature in which many authors seek to understand the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Literature about 9/11 focuses particularly on how white or immigrant male masculinity is shaken due to trauma as it fails to present the intricate relationship between traumatized woman and recovery. Furthermore, literary criticism on 9/11 narratives centered on the analysis of the traumatic experiences of individuals does not take the discussion further by examining the recovery process of trauma. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine Don DeLillo's Falling Man and the literary representation of the traumatized woman's recovery, a topic mostly neglected within the scholarship of 9/11 novels. Confronting trauma creates a psychological and emotional catharsis which is a vital process leading to healing and rejuvenation as well as coming into terms with the self, memory, past, and society. Through the lenses of contemporary literary trauma theory and contemporary trauma stress studies, this paper examines traumatized woman's recovery and healing to restructure, reorient, and rebuild self and life aftermath of 9/11 and its traumatic effects.