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In this study we argue that Don DeLillo parodies the paradigms of traditional apocalypse narratives in his novel, Falling Man (2007). This work illustrates how DeLillo's inversion of these paradigms foregrounds the entrapment of his characters into a mood of speculation about the end of the world. This entrapment into the mood of speculating about the End is closely associated with the mood of Islamophobia that permeates Western mainstream media. The significance of this study lies in showing that while DeLillo inverses or deconstructs the paradigms of traditional apocalypse in the novel, he constructs, instead, a secular version of apocalypse in order to unmask the threats that lurk beneath the individual as well as communal life. Ultimately, this essay argues that DeLillo's parody of the apocalypse does not provide a promise of redemption but perpetuates the sense of uncertainty about the end of the human world. This is probably why DeLillo assumes a narrative position that combines irony, parody, and, at times, playfulness. The argument utilizes the cultural as well as the textual perspectives that mark Falling Man as a counter-terrorist narrative. Unlike traditional apocalypse writers, DeLillo seems to claim that it is not the end of the world but how ordinary people feel about their threatened world that really counts.

Since the advent of the cold war, American popular culture, media, and literature portray Arabs and Muslims as dangerous creatures and terrorists. For a cohort of critics, the American novel is a glaring example of what might be called the one-sided representation of Islam and Muslims. Post 9/11 American novel has taken the incidents seriously to react against terrorism and Islam. From 9/11's ashes, Don DeLillo's Falling Man makes its readers live the traumatic events and feeds on the issue of terrorism to bring back the old cultural antagonism between West and East, or 'Self' and 'Other'. Within this context, this article examines the subjective representation of Islam in DeLillo's novel. Relying on the critical assumptions of Edward Said, Ian Almond, and Michel Foucault, this scrutiny aims to show that postmodernist American fiction does not respond to the principle of refraction and the flexibility of meaning