Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:21:42.936Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - DeLillo and masculinity

from PART IV - THEMES AND ISSUES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2008

John N. Duvall
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Indiana
Get access

Summary

Don DeLillo's fiction suggests that masculinity, rather than being inherent, is an insecure construction based on dominant societal norms and presented via mediated images. His writing offers a number of hypermasculine characters torn between upsetting and upholding the status quo; they display the inadequacy of stereotypes while suggesting that the concept of individuality is flawed and unsustainable. Literature can potentially aid the embedding of social conditioning; however, it can also provide a critical purchase from which to scrutinize social norms. While it is difficult to identify ideal alternatives in any cultural text, literature at least offers a forum for thinking about difference and boundary breaching. This is what DeLillo's writing does in its treatment of masculinity. Rather than replace one defunct cultural narrative with an equally invalid alternative, it displays the insecurity of masculinity without offering a facile replacement. What the reader instead becomes aware of is an emergent male self-consciousness, which is crucially and increasingly knowing about the performative nature of men's roles. For example, when Jack Gladney, the satirical protagonist of White Noise (1985), muses to himself about what his father-in-law might think of him, he reveals his own feelings of inadequacy, which may or may not reflect what Vernon thinks.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×