« The story […] that goes with the briefcase » : l’objet porteur d’histoire et de mémoire dans Falling Man de Don DeLillo

Abstract

This paper proposes to examine the role of the briefcase in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and the way in which it crystallizes traumatic memory. Initially a mere accessory that indirectly reveals fault-lines in the character’s psyche, the object soon takes on the role of a mediator, of an intermediary that creates a link with the other and weaves the testimony into being. A true actor in the novel, it acts as a vehicle for socialization, language and narrative. Eventually, the symbolic object ends up standing for the abandoned body of the friend; a sign of guilt but also of preserved memory, it becomes a memorial pointing to loss and to the survivor’s sense of inadequacy. The briefcase thus reveals the mourning process at work in the novel, and the process of substituting the object for the friend marks a form of symbolization that remains incomplete because unconscious.