The Mysterious Code-an Analysis Of Postmodernism In Digital Fortress

With the development of the society, on the basis of releasing from the shackles of traditional literature, more and more writers inherit and promote its advantages and gradually integrate postmodernism into their literary creation. Postmodernist literature tolerates a variety of different standards, thus it cuts a striking figure in contemporary literature step by step and then becomes a popular trend for literature creation, so it is highly greeted by contemporary writers. Popular literature, science fiction and sub-literary works are the manifestation of postmodernist literature. The representative schools of postmodernist literature include the Beat Generation, magic realism, black humor, existentialist literature and absurd drama and so forth. Postmodernist literature leaps over the gap between elite literature and popular literature, and the boundary between pure literature and popular literature is disappearing.The best-selling author of the United States---Dan Brown can be called the model of using postmodernist skill with ease. Dan Brown's representative masterpiece, Digital Fortress, is one of the most authentic high-tech thriller novels in recent years. It set National Security Agency as the background to explore the contradiction between civil privacy and national security. Digital Fortress became the best-selling book at once after the publication. The reason of having so much charm for this novel depends on his writing and narrative style which full of tension as well as its postmodernist features.This dissertation aims to interpret the postmodernist features of Digital Fortress by combining with existentialism under the high-tech information society. The purpose of the interpretation is to display the attitude of the novel toward the safety of this particular era, the change of interpersonal relationship, people's confusion of existence as well as their psychology in the information society.The dissertation is formed by five chapters. First of all, the part of introduction consists of the profile of Dan Brown, the plot of Digital Fortress, the real source for the author's creation and literature review.The second part is the introduction and interpretation to Sartre's existentialism which is as the theoretical support to the following content.The third part is the overview of postmodernism which includes the definition of post-modernism and the theoretical features of postmodernism.Then, the core of this dissertation appears. This part is the detailed analysis about postmodernist features in Digital Fortress. This section explains respectively indeterminacy, narrative features and features of literary genres of Digital Fortress. Especially the part of "indeterminacy of the figure" interprets the characteristic of the figures and the significance of their existence in detail by tightly linking to Sartre's existentialism. Literature cannot exist without language, and the proficiency of using language is the key to the success of the works. So in the part of indeterminacy of language, the dissertation analyzes Dan Brown's using of language in Digital Fortress in-depth. Dan Brown uses various games of words to constitute a complex and fancy narrative labyrinth. The purpose of using it is to attract the readers to participate in the games and make the readers feel happy during the process of managing to go out of the labyrinth. The games of words include wordplay, puns, anagrams, language play and so on. In addition, in the facet of narration, the dissertation specially focuses on postmodernist features of Digital Fortress, such as the alternation of time and space, the alternation of narrative perspectives and the open ending, etc. In the aspect of literary genre, the novel adopts the elements of detective, suspense, and love on the basis of inheriting traditional novels. This dissertation exerts to reflect the advantages of applying various literary genres in Digital Fortress. The typical postmodernist features of combination of reality and fabrication, serious elements and popular elements as well as science fiction and fabrication are discussed in the dissertation.Finally, the conclusion summarizes what has been discussed about, and restates the main points of its argument. Moreover, an appropriate evaluation of Dan Brown's writing features is presented. Through the analysis of the postmodernist features in Digital Fortress, the readers can have a further understanding of contemporary Western society, and especially have a deep thought of the question on what people do when their privacy no longer exists. The writing method with the features of postmodernism used by Dan Brown in this novel carries forward the postmodernist literature. At the same time, the character of blending literariness, knowledge and interest into one makes Digital Fortress become a successful work which can be appreciated by everyone.