Don DeLillo's Americana: technology, suffering and salvation

Official URL: http://www.ijhssi.org/papers/vol8(11)/Series-1/F0811013947.pdf

Don DeLillo's Americana portrays a subject inhabiting in a media-saturated America. The subject is suffering from fundamental alienation, fragmentation, and corruption triggered and developed by media and consumer society. It is the archetypal American condition of the mind or self, and it provides no escape or no salvation. Media and consumer society discussed in this papertransforms the first-person “I” into a third-person singular “We” and creates „one-dimensional man‟ “They”. This paper will argue the responsibility of literature in today's technological environment and demonstrate how literature produces awareness through its subject matter. Likewise, it will examine the suffering subject and a quest for authenticity and meaning in the heartland of America. Do authenticity and meaning still exist across America? Does mediasaturated America provide salvation for its suffering masses? Jean Baudrillard and Marshall McLuhan will constitute the backbone of this paper to bring these substantial cases into the open.