| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 外國語文學系所 === 106 === This thesis aims to discuss the impact of postmodern culture on the characters in two novels of Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Mao II. Both novels depict a society that is full of images, information, and commodities, unveiling how people fetishize different forms of commodities in postmodern culture. Thus, this thesis uses the key concept of Karl Marx’s commodity fetishism and essential critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson and Guy Debord’s theories to discuss the postmodern vision in DeLillo’s two novels. This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter explores how the main characters, Jack Gladney and his wife, Babette, defend their fear of death through consumerism. The second chapter discusses the Airborne Toxic Event in the novel, White Noise. With Jean Baudrillard’s conception of simulation, we find the American magic and dread in the media-saturated society. The third chapter discusses the proliferation of images in the novel, Mao II. With Walter Benjamin’s conception of “aura,” we understand how the aura of a work of art withered in the age of mechanical reproduction. Through discussion on Benjamin’s conception of aura, we understand how the novelist, Bill Gray, experiences as a loss of subjectivity in images.
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