“The Human Slivers of a Civilization”: Language Events in Don DeLillo’sThe Silence

Through a series of language events—Max’s made-up broadcast, Martin’s trancelike talks, and the concluding soliloquies—and authorial experimentations with alternate uses of language, in The Silence Don DeLillo investigates the limitations and redemptive potential of language accentuated by an unspecified apocalyptic shutdown. By juggling his complicated feelings toward language, he seeks to alert his characters, along with his readers, to the destructive consequences of escapism fuelled notably by media and technology, and to celebrate individual consciousness in an increasingly endangered world.