Lost In The Postmodern Pastoral

Literary studies in our postmodern age exist in a state of constant flux. The emergence of ecocriticism is attributed to the development of literary criticism and, more importantly, the global environment crisis, which is a burning issue throughout the world. Ecocriticism distinguishes itself from other critical approaches in that it studies the relationship between literature and the physical environment.White Noise, a novel published in 1985, is regarded by many critics as postmodern prototype. Particularly, the world the characters of the novel inhabit is recognizably the contemporary postmodern world as described by Jean Baudrillard. As a result of multiple reproductions of images and the rapid commodification of styles, referentiality and the real have been displaced by simulacra. The physical setting of the novel is typical of a postmodern pastoral. The term "pastoral" refers to any work which represents a withdrawal to a place apart that is close to the elemental rhythms of nature, where the protagonist achieves a new perspective on the complexities, frustrations, and conflicts of the social world.During the 1980s, U. S. novelists showed an increasing concern with the pervasive problem of toxic waste, a concern that is reflected in a new "toxic consciousness" in recent American fiction. White Noise, with the airborne toxic event at its right center, is a representative work.. In the novel, DeLillo illustrates the forces in ordinary life that threaten individuals both physically and psychologically. DeLillo does not offer the reader any route out of postmodernist self-consciousness and irony. An ecocritical analysis of the novel does not seek to terrify and dismay; it provides an alarm as well as a revelation of the earth and of the human beings.