Death and the Machine: J. G. Ballard’s Crash

Abstract

J. G. Ballard’s novel Crash represents one of the author’s most sustained efforts to explore a delusion centered on trauma and the possibility of acceptance of death. Crash’s uncompromising vision that embraces transgression and taboo allows for a rich exploration of issues seldom discussed in literary studies. In this paper, I provide a reading of Ballard’s novel under the perspective of death in life, situating it within the context of Ballard’s other work, mainly The Atrocity Exhibition, Concrete Island and the Harley Cokliss’s film of Crash! that predated the novel.