The critique of society presented in Dhalgren is based upon the libertarian movements of the 1960s, especially the civil-rights movement, the women's movement, and the gay liberation movement. The novel investigates the intersection of various social structures and the potential for the manipulation of values that such structures offer; above all it is concerned with the possibility of escape from social determinism.

Various self-interests attempt to simplify the catastrophe that has overtaken Bellona, as it changes day by day; at different points the narrative is unclear whether the change has happened because of a cosmological aberration, a nuclear accident, the severe mental debilitation of the protagonist, or, most tantalizingly, miscegenetic rape. In fact, these explanations shy away from the most probable, political assassination. Paul Fenster is no Martin Luther King or Malcolm X; but his murder, towards which the novel on its periphery is moving, resembles...