Nosheen Rana,
Department of English, University of Wah, Pakistan
One of the key elements that differentiates 9/11 from the events of the recent history post world war II is the magnanimous impact of its influence across the globe. Although 9/11 primarily took place in USA but its aftershocks were experienced by the people all over the globe. American ‘war on terror’ as a response to the event made the event a historical pivot that changed the course of political and social history of the world affecting people from and of different ethnicities and geographical locations of the world. Although a bit hesitant initially, the American fiction writer went on to generate their responses to the catastrophic event. Various writers tried to approach the event in various ways and all tried to identify the impact it had on the everyday lives of the people, the traumatic impact it had on minds of people and the fracture it caused in the social fabric of America. The aim of present research is to analyze Eric Walter’s fictional work in the light of Rye Anderson’s views about what and how American writers should write to face the challenge posed by 9/11. His theoretical essay ‘Blurry Close-ups’ is used as theoretical lens to analyze the text. The study is further extended to analyze ‘Americanness’ of two main characters of the novel. Terry Eagleton’s observation about Americans and American traits in his work ‘Across the pond: An Englishman’s view of America’ (2013) has provided the lens for this exploration.
Keywords: American Fiction, 9/11, Americanness
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Sixth International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.LLLD.IR), 9-10 October 2021, Ahwaz.