Abstract
This dissertation explores the interconnectedness of the themes of art and trauma in three post-2000 novels by Don DeLillo: The Body Artist, Falling Man, and Point Omega. This investigation is achieved through a close reading of the three texts and the ways in which the experience of trauma in the novels is inextricably bound up with the creation and reception of art: personal and cultural traumas inform the artistic practices of characters and colour the ways in which they interact with the artworks they encounter. The dissertation therefore discusses the ways in which the connection between art and trauma in the novels goes both ways: trauma influences the creation of artworks, and artworks provide some healing for trauma sufferers. In The Body Artist, Lauren Hartke, reeling from the catastrophic shock of her husband’s suicide, turns to her work as a performance artist and creates an artwork that, drawing on her trauma, provides some measure of catharsis for her. Falling Man’s Lianne Glenn attains a similar catharsis after being affected by 9/11, although she achieves this by actively engaging with the artworks of others, rather than by transforming her trauma into art. However, her husband, Keith Neudecker, who escaped one of the towers, is unable to find any healing in the wake of his traumatic experience; he becomes trapped in a cyclical narrative that both begins and ends with his trauma. Point Omega, this study argues, draws on generic intertextuality, and the philosophies of Zen Buddhism and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s omega point theory in order to provide a seemingly bleak outlook that is, nevertheless, underpinned by a kind of optimism. There is no catharsis in Point Omega, but DeLillo does display a poignant belief in the power of art to provide a sort of pre-emptive healing in the face of the possibility of a massively traumatic apocalypse. Thus, this study proposes that these three novels progress towards Point Omega’s hopeful belief in the healing power of art by showing that DeLillo presents art as not exactly a cure (the catharsis is always too tenuous for this) but certainly a soothing balm for sufferers of trauma.
M.A. (English Literature)