Da Cunha Lewin, Katherine (2018) Apocalyptism, environmentalism and the other in Don DeLillo's End Zone, Great Jones Street and Ratner's Star. In: Da Cunha Lewin, Katherine and Ward, Kiron (eds.) Don DeLillo. Contemporary Critical Perspectives . Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 33-48. ISBN 9781350040878

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Book Section
Schools and Departments:	School of English > English
Subjects:	P Language and Literature P Language and Literature > PS American literature > PS0700 Individual authors
Depositing User:	Katherine Da Cunha Lewin
Date Deposited:	04 Feb 2019 12:10
Last Modified:	04 May 2020 01:00
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/78877

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