An Interpretation Of Trauma Narratives In Don DeLillo's Fiction

Don De Lillo(1937-)is one of the most significant contemporary American novelists,ranking with Thomas Pynchon,Philip Roth,and Tony Morrison.As a prolific author of 17 full-length novels,more than 20 short stories and 5 dramas,Don De Lillo is a serious writer and has earned great reputation with his preoccupation with history,politics,and contemporary social problems of America and his depiction of a panorama of postmodern society.Up till now De Lillo has won a number of literary awards such as National Book Award,the PEN/Faulkner Award,the William Dean Howells Award,and a National Book Award nomination.In a 2005 poll for the best American novel published since 1980 conducted by the New York Times Book Review,three of De Lillo's novels ranked in the top twenty:Underworld(1997),White Noise(1985),and Libra(1988).De Lillo's fiction is highly acclaimed both by the literary critics and common readers.Since human society entered the 20^th century,people have gone through unprecedented sufferings and disasters,such as the two World Wars,holocaust,environmental problem,nuclear disasters and terrorist attacks,etc.,which cause psychological trauma to those who experienced or witnessed those traumatic events.So the willingness for a type of literature to present and discuss trauma has become a universal and urgent issue.Meanwhile,the western study of trauma theory comes to flourish in recent years and the contemporary trauma theories have developed into a dynamic and cross-disciplinary enterprise combining psychology,philosophy,sociology,history,culture,and literature.Among them,literary criticism from perspective of trauma theory provides a new method to interpret and reveal the function of literary works in representing psychological trauma.Based on the trauma theory and narrative theory,this study aims at interpreting Don De Lillo's trauma fictions by exploring how the narrative strategies employed in the fictions represent people's traumatic experience,analyzing the characteristics of the traumas reflected in the fictions in terms of theme,plot and language in the novels and illustrating De Lillo's endeavor to represent personal and collective trauma in contemporary American society.By breaking conventional linear narrative and adopting postmodern narrative strategies,De Lillo's trauma narrative achieves the unity in both style and theme.Through examining trauma narrative of De Lillo,the project tries to provide different perspective and research methods for the study of De Lillo and open up a new way in narrative criticism and new horizon for interpretation of De Lillo.The study will be presented in 6 successive chapters,structured stepwise as follows:Chapter 1 presents a general introduction to the whole dissertation.It begins with an introduction to Don De Lillo's life and works.Followed by are the research background,the research purpose,the methodology,the significance of this study and an introduction to the organization of the study.It finally ends with a review of the studies of Don De Lillo at home and abroad.Chapter 2 outlines the study's theoretical framework:trauma theory and narrative theory.The first part of the chapter gives a general account of the rise of trauma study,some key concepts of trauma theory,and the relationship between trauma theory and fiction writing,focusing on the application of narrative strategy in representing traumatic experience.The second part gives a general introduction of narrative theory and describes the characteristics of narrative strategy of postmodern fiction.Chapter 3 focuses on White Noise.Based on the theory of trauma and narrative,it discusses the negative effects of the culture of consumer and mass media on the common people and especially the traumatic experience that the contemporary advanced technology has brought about to American people.With an analysis of the fragmented narrative in this novel,the chapter explores how Don De Lillo depicts the unhappiness of people's life in postindustrial society with fragmented plot and fragmented language.Chapter 4 aims at exploring trauma representation in Libra,the novel about the historical event of the assassination of John F.Kennedy.It analyzes how Don De Lillo manages to represent collective trauma caused by political conspiracy through the relevance of narrative strategies of metaficiton,multiple focalization and second person narration to reveal the traumatic effects that this event has brought about to American common people.Chapter 5 discusses Don De Lillo's novel Falling Man narrating 9/11 terrorist attacks.It examines how the terrorist attacks have affected the lives of the survivors,witnesses,and their family members.Reading it in terms of narrative theory,it discusses the narrative strategies of shifting focalization,discontinuous time,and nonlinear narrative in representing the traumatic experience of American common people in 9/11 terrorist attacks.Chapter 6,as a conclusion,summarizes what has been discussed in the previous chapters and presents a positive general evaluation of Don De Lillo's trauma narratives.It argues that in these fictions Don De Lillo,with effective narrative strategies,expresses his grave concern for the traumatic events in the postmodern social,political,cultural and scientific context,and reveals the psychological trauma to those who experienced or witnessed them.