Hyperreality:a Study Of The Postmodern Reality In Don Delillo’s Novels

This dissertation explores the American postmodern reality in Don DeLillo’s novels which is depicted as a distinctive dystopia reigned by objects. The postmodern objects represented in DeLillo’s fiction are consumer objects quintessential to the postmodern society, quite different from objects in traditional societies. Consumer objects that constitute the postmodern reality are not only physical ones but also so-called cultural or spiritual ones, and the proportion of the virtual or cyber consumer goods has been rising at an unprecedented pace. Postmodern objects, therefore, are informed with abstract, virtual and semiotic elements, especially the ideological ingredients. DeLillo’s fiction presents the postmodern reality as a powerful panopticon surrounded and reinforced by consumer objects, signs and consumer ideology which are produced by the capital-driven model of simulacra.This dissertation, based on Baudrillardian theory of hyperreality, studies the four aspects of postmodern reality in DeLillo’s fiction:the object base, the superstructure (the model of simulacra), the implosion as the postmodern reality’s essence, and the crisis therein.In addition to Introduction and Conclusion, this dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter "The System of Objects:The Quick-Sand Object Base of Postmodern Reality in DeLillo’s Fiction" discusses White Noise, Cosmopolis, Players, using the Baudrillardian theory on the system of objects. In White Noise, consumers’ existence and life are swallowed and driven by the quick sand of ephemeral and ever-updating objects. The system of objects and its discourse articulate the consumers’ being. Cosmopolis and Players present the capital’s electronic system as the base of postmodern reality. Chapter2,"The Genesis by Simulacrum and the Hypereality in Novels by DeLillo," analyzes3categories of simulacrum models that generate hyperreality:movies, television and the Internet. Libra and Point Omega point to the movies’ edition and rendition of postmodern reality and human beings therein. White Noise and Cosmopolis represent the ubiquitous and almighty models in the form of TV and the Internet which constitute the omnipotent matrix to envelop man in simulacra or hyperreality.Chapter3"Implosion and the Unidirectional Black-Hole System in DeLillo’s Novels" uses the Baudrillardian theory on implosion to discuss the nature of the postmodern reality described in such novels as Libra, Cosmopolis, Underworld and Players. The boundaries and distinctions between the true/false, good/evil, positive/negative etc. are imploded away as well as the contradiction in Marxist dialectics. The implosion leads to a black-hole system of capital which co-opts everything for its own benefit. The last chapter "Hyperreality’s Breach of Symbolic Exchange and Its Punishment" addresses the crisis of the postmodern reality that is exposed in novels such as Cosmopolis, Falling Man, The Names and Players.This study argues that Don DeLillo’s fiction critiques a hyperreal panopticon that postmodern human beings build around themselves. DeLillo’s creation echoes one of the greatest Western literary traditions-the paradise lost motif. What happens in the postmodern reality is man, through gluttonizing the fruit of knowledge again, regains a paralyzing paradise where he amuses himself to death.