Commodity: Triggering Uncertainty and Dilemma in Delillo’s White Noise

Abstract

Postmodern conditions and experiences, specifically, uncertainties and contradictions, multiple interpretations or perspectives, rejection of universal, the loss of individual in the face of plurality, precede some kind of inherent predicament and dilemma as a residue or by-product of the constant commodification of life. Don Delillo’s White Noise, as a product of the postmodern era by a postmodern thinker, incorporates these traits, and predominantly, the underlying dilemma. One of the issues of this research is to trace in this novel these postmodern contradictions and dilemmas, and subsequent bathos of consumer society, under the burden of intensified productivism. This research also aims at scrutinizing these socio-personal postmodern dilemmas in the characters of the novel and ends up analyzing some psychosomatic predicaments in their deeds and thoughts relating to the personal experiences and contexts of the readers of this novel