Abstract
The interrelationship of natural and cultural history in Don DeLillo’s Underworld presents an ecology of mimesis. If, as Timothy Morton argues, ecological thought can be understood as a “mesh of interconnection,” DeLillo’s novel studies the interpretation of connection. Underworld situates its action in the Cold War era. DeLillo’s formal techniques examine the tropes of paranoia, containment, excess, and waste peculiar to the history of the Cold War. Parataxis and free-indirect discourse emphasize the contexts of reference in the novel, illustrating how hermeneutics informs the significance of boundaries. DeLillo’s use of parataxis exemplifies the conditions that propose and limit metaphor’s reference to reality, conditions that offer the terms for meaningful action. I utilize Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to demonstrate how Underworld situates the reference to reality in its temporal and narrative condition. The historical situation of the novel’s narrative structure allows DeLillo to interrogate the role of discourse in producing and interpreting connection. Underworld offers layers of significance; the reader’s engagement with the novel’s discourse reaffirms the conditions of a meaningful relationship with reality in the pertinence of a metaphor.
Highlights
Figurative conditions present an ecology in Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel, Underworld
A work of fiction, the novel is grounded in the history and historiography of the Cold War era
DeLillo’s ecology shows how narration proposes the conditions of relation to a world that the text’s reference opens
Summary
Figurative conditions present an ecology in Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel, Underworld. DeLillo’s ecology shows how narration proposes the conditions of relation to a world that the text’s reference opens. DeLillo shows how the contexts of reference shape the relationship of narrative to reality. DeLillo invites the reader to consider the stakes of the figuration of history, a practice that holds promise for both the conservative and the utopic aspects of our relation to symbols and to narrative. The novel betrays a thematic concern with the situation of discourse in time and history Her reading overlooks the temporality of discourse as an indicator of its part in action. Underworld trains the reader’s attention to the conditions that govern the reference of discourse and its interpretation as metaphor. DeLillo points attention to the figurative conditions through which symbols maintain relationship with reality and with time
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