Ethical Crisis And Postmodern Consumer Culture In Don Delillo's Cosmopolis

Don DeLillo is highly acclaimed by the literary critics both in the United States and abroad.With his unremitting effort to portray contemporary American life,DeLillo has explored a wide range of postmodern themes,including consumption culture,saturation of mass media,terrorism,psychology of the crowd etc.Cosmopolis,a novel published in 2003,narrates the suicidal downfall of 28-year old billionaire Eric Packer.Set in modern New York,yet highly futuristic in tone,Cosmopolis profoundly inquires into the issues of the prevailing capitalism,technology,ubiquitous mass media and the philosophy of life and death.On the basis of analyzing the ethical crisis presented in the novel,this thesis intends to examine the relationship between postmodern consumption culture and social ethical crisis through intensive reading of the novel.This thesis consists of five chapters,the introduction,three-body chapters,and the conclusion.The introductory part focuses firstly on providing relevant background information concerning the author,and the novel in discussion with a recapitulation of literature review on Cosmopolis at home and abroad.The introduction ends with a brief illustration on the research task,research method and structure of this thesis.The second chapter lays emphasis on summarizing textual presentations of ethical crisis in the novel.The ethical crisis is classified into individual level and social level separately.In the third chapter,the significance is first attached to the theoretical elucidation of "consumption of signs," and how the shift from consumption of commodities to consumption of signs brings ideological changes to society in the aspects of reification and class solidification.Secondly,the significance is thus attached to large scale of utilizing "sign-value" of products,and choices of consumption and its underlying cultural capital accordingly overpower class identity modes.The fourth chapter looks into the other crucial fostering factors to consumption of signs,i.e.media culture;firstly,to illustrate theoretical implications of media culture in postmodern society,and second to explore media's role in reinforcing the influence and dynamic forces of consumer culture based on the analysis of the novel.The last chapter is the conclusion,intending to restate the core idea of this thesis suggested in DeLillo's Cosmopolis:there is a close relevance between postmodern consumer culture and social ethical crisis in Cosmopolis,specifically,the booming consumer culture backed by mass media versus deteriorated social ethical disorder which causes severe identity crises and social turmoil.The whole society,therefore,faces a tough situation to reconstruct ethical order,and individual in confusion also faces the problem of adjusting to new reality ethically.Additionally,this thesis offers a novel angle for interpreting Cosmopolis and other DeLillo's works.