The Story Archive

End Zone

Don DeLillo · 1972 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

A running back with a history of leaving colleges lands at a small school in west Texas, where the football programme is being rebuilt and the desert runs to the horizon in every direction. Between practices he reads about thermonuclear strategy, takes a course in the untellable, and finds the language of the game and the language of the war converging. DeLillo's second book set the terms — jargon, dread, systems — that the later work would enlarge.

Open End Zone in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Genre
SatirePsychological
Theme
War & ViolenceExistential AbsurdityIsolation & AlienationDeath & Mortality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Anti-HeroEveryman
Plot structure
EpisodicOpen Ending
Symbol / motif
The BattlefieldThe Game / CardsThe Wilderness
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
SatiricalIronicAbsurdist
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues