Sichuan International Studies University Main Characters’ Depravity In Falling Man:

Don DeLillo (Don DeLillo,1936-) is one of the four contemporary Americangiants and one charming leader in the postmodern novel area. He is a productivewriter with unique narrative style. So far, he has written fifteen novels, four playsand several short stories and essays, so he not only has a great number of readers butalso is a renowned artist in the critical circle. He has received a number ofprestigious awards including Award in Literature from the American Academy andInstitute of Arts and Letters, National Book Award for White Noise, Jersalem Prizeawarded for Underworld, PEN/Faulkner Award for Mao II and so on. Since his workFalling Man was published in2007, it has received favorable feedbacks in UnitedStates. The work with a complex narrative structure is based on the shocking9/11terrorist attack with grand historical backgrounds, language tension, and frequentchanges in space and time.In1974, the French Neo-Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre published thebook The production of Space. He believes that the space we concern can be dividedinto material space, spiritual space and social space, while these three kinds of spacetake historicity, sociality and spatiality jointly demonstrated into an ultra-scientificsubject called trialectics. In1996, the America postmodern geographer Edward Sojapublished his book The Third Space which further explains Lefebvre’s social space.In the light of the theory of Henry Lefebvre’s trialectics and Soja’s The Third Space,the narrative skills employed by Don DeLillo in The Falling Man can be betterappreciated in terms of the material space, spiritual space, social space and thetransformations of spatial narrative techniques, and the novel urges reader to havesome insightful looks into the main character’s depravity after the event of9/11terrorist attacks.On the one hand, this thesis describes the different spaces in the novel; on the other hand, it analyzes the spatial narrative transformations on narrative spaces andnarrative factors. At last it delves into the main character’s physical depravity,spiritual depravity, even depravity in terms of the life outlook. Don DeLillo usesspecial spatial narrative techniques to tell the main story of the spatial transformation,which is fast, frequent and natural, so as to show the characteristics of post modernnovel. The work is based on the shocking event9/11terrorist attacks and its narrativestyle is special in the shaping of the characters.The thesis consists of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. Theintroduction mainly introduces the author Don DeLillo, his novel Falling Man, theliterature review on the previous research of this novel and the research methods andthe origin and meaning of Space Theory, The Production of Space and TheThirdspace of Soja. Chapter one presents the artistic use of spaces in Falling Man. Itdepicts the realistic fatal material space after Twin Tower’s falling, featuring humanspiritual space and social diseased space. Chapter two focuses on the spatial narrativetransformations among various narrative techniques. Still, it focuses most on thetransformations in terms of narrators, narrative plots, and narrative settings. Chapterthree delves into the main characters’ depravity in body, mental and life outlook. Thischapter analyzes the spiritual space of three main characters Keith, Lianne andHammad, and indicates the human’s self-depravity after the9/11terrorist attack. Theconclusion restates the topic and summarizes the main grounds of argument.