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From the Uncanny to the Sublime: 9/11 and Don DeLillo's Falling Man
-- Pramod K Nayar
This paper examines Don DeLillo's now-cult 9/11 novel, Falling Man. It provides a framework for
reading the novel, arguing that to simply treat it as a literary expression of trauma is inadequate, given the
layers that DeLillo gives his narratives. Building on a variety of theoretical concepts, specifically Freud and
later psychoanalysts, and cultural theorists such as Nicholas
Royle, on the uncanny, and Christine Battersby, Kimberley Segall, and others on the sublime, the paper argues that DeLillo's central trope of
dematerialization recalls the uncanny and in fact treats the events of 9/11 as uncanny, with its ghostly doublings and
the central image of fading and transience. Having established the uncanny's dematerialization as a
synecdoche for the events of 9/11, DeLillo, the paper argues in its second part, suggests a traumatic sublime.
The traumatic sublime emerges in the novel from the condition of uncanny perception (of 9/11) through
the presence of two components: repetition and incorporation of the foreign.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
`The Dirty Jap': The Trial
of Prejudice in David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars
-- Archana V
David Guterson in his Snow Falling on
Cedars weaves a fiction around the trial for the murder of
Carl Heine, an American. Though a work of fiction, the novel remains faithful to its portrayal of the
persistent prejudice against the Japanese Americans in various forms. Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese
American, accused of the murder faces prejudice among the whites of San Piedro, a fictional island, with even
the judges not being objective during the hearing of the case. The author traces, in this narration of the
tale of a wronged individual, a series of betrayal meted out to the entire Japanese American community.
This paper sees the prejudice against Kabuo in the trial as a smaller manifestation of the general racial
hatred towards the entire section of the Japanese Americans, especially before and after the Second
World War.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Ike McCaslin and the Measure
of Heroism
-- Vikrant Sehgal
Ike McCaslin's life is a series of obstacles and heroism. They are good entertainment and often
anthologized. But further than that, the three stories from Go Down, Moses—"The Old People," "The Bear," and
"Delta Autumn"— constitute a numinous, and for Faulkner truly religious, statement of man's heroic relation to
the wild land. This paper holds that a proper evaluation of Ike McCaslin's life is essential to an
understanding of Faulkner's measure of heroism and his belief in the prophetic possibilities of life and concludes that
the ultimate measure of heroism lies in the capacity to grieve and suffer.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Cosmos and Consciousness
in the New Age Digital Aesthetics:
An Exploration into the World
of The Matrix and Final Fantasy VII
-- T Prabhu
Since its earliest days, much of science fiction has perceived technology as a symbol of human
avarice. Frankensteins and Nautiluses were once projected as rude interventions into the ambience of the
cosmos. However, so much spellbound by the machine that the man now is, the humans themselves are
today seen as the troublemakers in the digitized orderly environment of the structured machinehood of The Matrix, Surrogates, and so on. This paper analyzes how, in the present age of simulation and
artificial intelligence, the human consciousness is not structured mechanically (like that in the days of Metropolis) and gets manipulated digitally (as in "there is no spoon" of The Matrix). The paper also suggests that the manipulated digital sequences on the screen in the
much-fancied "role-play" video game Final Fantasy
VII create an alternative identity to the player, which is
so real and consequential that it makes one believe that "the self-replicating nanites" (that colonizes
the human brain cells) of The Gamer, or "the simulated reality" manipulated by "the sentinel machines"
of The Matrix, are the images of the possible real-life consequences of the new age digital culture.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Illusion versus Reality
in the Major Plays of Eugene O'Neill
-- Neena Jain
Illusion and reality are the two poles between which the action of most of the plays of Eugene
O'Neill moves. In the twentieth century, science, industrialization, urbanization, and democratic idealism
failed to restore the identity of man. Faced with the absurdity, nothingness, and meaninglessness of
modern life, O'Neill's characters find themselves unable to establish a creative and spontaneous
relationship with the world. These characters try to live up to false self-images and perpetuate illusory conception
of their selves. This paper shows how O'Neill, in his plays, focuses his attention on man's
endless struggle between illusion and reality, between the opposite images of the self. Meaningful action
is possible only when man strips off his illusion fronting the shapeless and nameless terrors of
existence and acts in obedience to the secret impulse of his character. Thus, finally, man experiences a rich
and stupendous sense of mystery of life and universe, and survives.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
A Comparative Study
of the Protagonists in William Shakespeare's King
Lear and Arthur Miller's All My Sons
-- Deepak Chaswal and Pradeep Kumar Chaswal
This paper presents a comparative study of the protagonists in William Shakespeare's King Lear and Arthur Miller's All My
Sons. In these plays, the problem concerns the conflicting self-image and the
notion of self-identity of the parent, leading to a parent-child conflict. Like Lear in King Lear, Joe Keller in All My Sons is a doting and loving father. While Joe Keller's self-contradictory image, that of a loving father and
of a corrupt businessman, proves to be his undoing, Lear's possessiveness and demanding nature, in spite
of his love for his daughters, bring about his downfall. The paper takes a close look at the flawed thinking
of these two individuals and presents it as the root cause of their tragic failure.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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