This paper aims to explore the possibility of individuality amid the world of image depicted in Don DeLillo’s Mao II. The image is built on the notion of the crowd as a constant threat to one’s individuality. However, while the image is mostly considered transmitted via media, Don DeLillo extends the notion of the image to include the empirical and the imagined.. That is, the crowd implied in the image can be perceived in the empirical, mediated, and imagined, respectively referring to the mass gathering, photography and TV watching, and the writing experience. The image suffusing life not only thwarts the recognition of reality but disturbs the certainty of self distinction. Mark Osteen contends that characters in Mao II are “thin-boundaried and permeable” and Mark Edmundson considers the self no more than a “conductor, a relay point . . . for currents of forces” (Osteen 1999: 656). Nonetheless, such argument merely account for part of what Don DeLillo presents in Mao II. His keen observation of the image-encompassing life shrewdly implies how individuality remains possible in face of the self-diminishing image. In Mao II, individuality emerges by both responding to and creating the image. Don DeLillo deliberately emphasizes the distinctive responses to the image to accentuate one’s individuality. With such characters as the photographer and the writer, DeLillo confirms the individual creativity with their creation of images. Hence, no longer restricted to the exploration of the boundary between fiction and fact underlying the image, Don DeLillo profoundly and skillfully expresses his concern about the individuality wrapped behind the incessant and ubiquitous image.
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