Disillusionment in Postmodern American Literature The latter half of the twentieth century saw a raft of dramatic changes to American culture and society, bringing with them new forms living and thinking about the world. Beginning in the 1960s and continuing onward, the country saw a deep disillusionment with the suburban trappings of contemporary America, as Cold War anxiety combined with rampant consumerism to instill a sense of moral vacuity, which was

In the third section of the book Babette is cheating on Jack, hoping to gain access to a drug (Dylar) that treats people who fear dying. Clearly DeLillo is playing off of society's fear of death. Eventually Jack kills the man Babette was having liaisons with. White Noise was published in 1985, which makes DeLillo something of a clairvoyant because the author reflects on "…the way the mediations of television

Human emotions and values are detached and unreal in this work, as well. Pynchon paints vivid pictures of the characters, but they are all flawed, somehow. Oedipa is married to a disc jockey junkie, Dr. Hilarius is a psycho afraid of Nazi retribution, the Paranoids really are paranoid, Metzger disappears, and Pierce Inverarity is a dead jokester who may be having the last laugh on Oedipa. The characters, like society,

Postmodernism Post Modernism and Individualism and Responsibility Introduction and Postmodern Definition Understanding the postmodern paradigm is a little like looking in to a bowl of spaghetti, and without using any utensils, trying to determine how many individual pieces of spaghetti are present, and what is their average length. The postmodern thought process which now dominates our culture is inter-twining, complex philosophy which is the combination of failed modern thought, along with the new

Great Awakening: The Beginning of Evangelicalism The evangelicals started a new movement in the 1950s called new evangelicalism with a basis on human experiences that downplayed the role of doctrine and turned back on external church relations which in a way made it hard to differentiate evangelicalism from the mainstream Christendom. This movement has experienced several transformations since the Reformation from pietistic evangelism, fundamentalist evangelism, and classic evangelism to the

The second half, entitled "Airborne Toxic Event, however, serves the role of criticizing the reality of American society and the result of its obsession with consumerism. In the second half, a chemical spill releases a mysterious airborne toxic event over Jack's home area, requiring everyone to evacuate. This event forces Jack to confront his own mortality and society's general fear of death and how it attempts to prevent death