Don DeLillo’s short story The Starveling explores themes of isolation, voyeurism, and the act of witnessing life unfold around us. It appears in his collection The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories, published in 2011, and quickly drew attention for its intense psychological atmosphere and philosophical undertones. This narrative, centered on a man whose daily ritual is watching films, shifts dramatically when he becomes fixated on a woman he dubs the starveling. Through subtle shifts in perspective and tone, the story examines how passive observation can tip into unsettling engagement.
Plot and Structure
The story follows Leo, a man who spends his days moving between movie theaters in New York City. His life is consumed by films; he attends screening after screening but never watches the same movie twice. His companion, Flory his ex-wife participates in his quiet domestic routine, while he devotes himself entirely to this habit of cinema-going. The surreal nature of this regimen hints at deeper emotional withdrawal.
One day, Leo notices a very thin woman in the audience whom he names the starveling. He begins to follow her, weaving a fictional inner life around her imagining dialogue, habits, even medical conditions. His constructed narrative gives him a new purpose, until he confronts her in a public restroom: he enters under false pretenses, attempting to interact. The moment becomes tense and ambiguous, and soon another woman enters, interrupting the encounter. Leo retreats, returning home to discover Flory holding a still, yogalike pose in the kitchen both an anchor and mirror to his own stillness.
Thematic Layers
Witnessing vs. Acting
At the heart of The Starveling is the distinction between witness and actor. Leo has withdrawn into an ascetic routine, opting out of typical life events holidays, meals, relationships in favor of passive film-watching. According to one group discussion, He is actively making a full time occupation of his movie-going uncomfortable with actively shaping his perception
Isolation and Obsession
The story’s tension arises from Leo’s deepening obsession. He invents details about the starveling’s life family, health, habits that exist only in his mind. A Reddit commenter observed:
Leos speaks of her as his own fictionalised character unattached to a real living person. She was born to be unseen, he thought, except by him.’
This projection turns him into her voyeur and creator, shattering the barrier between observer and participant.
Perception and Ambiguity
DeLillo leaves readers guessing. During the restroom scene, Leo wonders:
Was the man threatening the woman against the wall? Did the man intend to approach the woman and press her to the hard tile surface?
These questions come from Leo’s projection but also reflect societal ambiguity about intent. Is the encounter benign or predatory? The unanswered tension is emblematic of DeLillo’s broader themes modern life’s uncertainty and murky motivations.
Style and Tone
DeLillo writes with detached precision, mirroring Leo’s objective stance. As noted in The Guardian, The point of the story is that Leo conceives a strange fascination with one very thin woman he keeps seeing at the movies
Symbolism and Imagery
The salon of cinema becomes a symbol for passive consumption, a space where life is experienced only through screens. Flory’s yoga pose at the end is emblematic: she refuses to move a living statue anchoring Leo back to reality. A reader on a DeLillo-themed Reddit thread remarked that Leo becomes a narrator here only to witness the life of another, raising profound questions about the nature of presence
Connection to DeLillo’s Larger Themes
Critics and scholars often connect The Starveling to DeLillo’s fascination with alienation, perception, and apocalypse of culture. In The Angel Esmeralda, DeLillo often explores characters on the edges witnesses to events they cannot fully participate in. Leo is a microcosm of that theme.
From Isolation to Revelation
DeLillo’s short stories and his novels regularly depict characters caught in existential limbo. As Cornel Bonca writes in the Los Angeles Review of Books, DeLillo’s later work deals less in irony and more in spiritual intimations, giving his detached characters a sudden chance for transcendence
Critical Reception
The Starveling has been widely praised as a standout piece in DeLillo’s oeuvre. The Guardian emphasized its compelling depiction of the strange fascination and the tension that arises from passive observation
Legacy and Impact
As part of DeLillo’s only short story collection, The Starveling encapsulates his mature artistry. It demonstrates his ability to compress complex themes ghosting, voyeurism, spiritual emptiness into a compact narrative, leaving readers with more questions than answers. It is called the only story in The Angel Esmeralda that I will probably go back and read again and again
The Starveling captures a moment of existential suspended animation. With a protagonist whose life is defined by watching others, the story raises unsettling questions about presence, loneliness, and intrusion. Through precise prose and symbolic tension, DeLillo crafts a tale that feels both intimate and opaque, disturbing in its subtlety. It stands as a powerful reflection on the nature of witnessing suggesting that those who watch too closely may lose themselves, while absence may speak louder than presence.
: