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Apocalyptism, environmentalism and the other in Don DeLillo's End Zone, Great Jones Street and Ratner's Star

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posted on 2023-06-09, 15:09 authored by Katherine Da Cunha Lewin
Throughout his writing, Don DeLillo has demonstrated a proclivity for thinking about the end. This subject emerges in various ways: through the discussion of nuclear war and chemical spills as well as an individual's fear of their inevitable demise. However, though DeLillo’s fiction may explore multiple meanings of ‘end’ and though our anxiety for the end may remain, the ability for us to understand or predict the end is constantly changing. In contemporary eco-criticism, critics suggest that apocalyptism paves the way for new forms of thinking about our environment, as well as our relationships with others. This essay will look at three novels from the 1970s, End Zone (1972) Great Jones Street (1973) and Ratner’s Star (1976) to trace how DeLillo creates fictions that think through the ethics of representation, in which ‘ending’ means to re-think our relationship to others. In doing this, he suggests that we must adapt our nuclear anxiety to form new social and ethical connections.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Publisher

Bloomsbury Academic

Page range

33-48

Pages

216.0

Book title

Don DeLillo

ISBN

9781350040878

Series

Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Katherine Da Cunha Lewin, Kiron Ward

Legacy Posted Date

2019-02-04

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2020-05-04

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2019-02-01

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