Everything Now is Measured by After: Memory and Spatialized Psychological Time in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the power of memory to spatialize the psychological time in Don
DeLillo’s Falling Man. Since postmodernism turns to be the age of space, time proceeds towards
spatialization, basing its structure on simultaneity and instantaneity that are to be the main
attributes of the postmodern space. Therefore, Time shifts from being chronological and
sequential to be simultaneous and instantaneous. It is worth mentioning that Don DeLillo is one
of the prominent postmodernist writers whose works are predicated on the spatialization of time.
As such, his Falling Man (2007) revolves around the psychological struggle the characters
experience in the post 9/11 attack. The attack moment that still haunts the
characters’consciousness makes them live in a spatialized psychological time where their
traumatic past coexists simultaneously with their present. Thereupon, one may notice that
memory, as an intermediate between past and present, contributes to create simultaneity and
spatialization in the characters’ minds. Indeed, spatialization becomes no longer confined to the
characters’ consciousness only but moves on to define their actions too.