The American Journey in Literature - Essay Example

Almost a century later Don Delillo’s Falling Man (2007) is set in the same location but under very different circumstances. The tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers has just happened and the shock to the main characters is still palpable. Both books comment little on the political and economic events surrounding the story but focus instead on how these matters affect a small selection of main characters.

Material prosperity is an accepted norm in the two books: “Situated at the heart of Gatsby's story is the metanarrative central to American culture--the deeply conservative ideology of capitalism, the story of rags to riches, of power, love, and fame achieved through personal wealth.” (Giltrow and Stock: 1997, p. 477) The shady main character Jay Gatsby reflects on all that the city offers: “For a while, these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing. (Scott Fitzgerald, 1990, pp. 95-96)

            Descriptions of the furnishings and clothing of the main characters show a lingering fascination with the glitter and wealth:  “I (= Nick) bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the  mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets …” (Scott Fitzgerald, 1990, p. 10) “Her (= Daisy’s) porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine” (Scott Fitzgerald, 1990, p. 142); “and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie, hurried in.” (Scott Fitzgerlald, 1990, p. 81) This brightness contrasts sharply with the atmosphere at the end of the novel when Myrtle has been killed and Gatsby also is dead: “Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash heaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.” (Scott Fitzgerals, 1990, p. 152-153). The events in the book depict a journey from a glitzy American dream world to a nightmare of death and destruction.

            The falling grey dust of the twin towers is where Delillo’s characters begin their particular journeys. In the broken, fragmented environment of post 9/11 New York, successful lawyer Keith is disoriented. He is lost, and his life’s journey has been savagely interrupted. He needs to re-orient himself and embark on a new and very different kind of journey. Critics point out the post-modern irony of this, as the center of world trade and finance shifts from being the last century’s American dream, where streets are paved with gold, to the nightmare of death and destruction in the new century. The journey that people now undertake is not from rural poverty to urban wealth and sophistication, but something far deeper. The focus now is on characters who “struggle to embark on an introspective process to recover their traumatized selves.” (Schmeck and Schweighauser: 2010, p. 49). It has been noted also that while  Delillo’s view of New York society has a certain bias: “the dominant narrative focus is on the white upper-middle-class” (Pöhlmann, 2010, p. 53), there is also at least some attempt to portray alternative views of the world, in the depiction of Hammad and his religious zeal against empty materialism. Though the contexts of the two novels are different, and they start at different points, their messages are very similar: all that glitters is not gold, and the task of urban Americans is to find meaning and identity when these superficial aspirations turn to dust.