| This study explores how American literature of the past century, and especially in post-WW II America addresses the problem of individual moral agency in the context of a material world shaped by patterns of force that often seem to overwhelm any effects that might be achieved by individuals. Chapter by chapter, this dissertation explores several of these novelists from about a 40-year period, from Joseph Heller's biting satire of the military industrial complex, Catch-22 (1961), to Jonathan Franzen's caustic critique of late-twentieth-century America, The Corrections (2001). The study also considers both Thomas Pynchon's post-modern satire of seeking truth in history, science, or any aspect of life, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Don DeLillo's landmark academic satire, White Noise (1985). In each of these works, the writer effectively examines and critiques moral failures and social ills of our hyper-materialistic culture---indeed, one can call each a work of genius. At the same time, none of these works, nor the dozens of others like them, offers readers any direction for action, any choice but to sit back and enjoy the gallows humor of the crumbling moral edifice we call civilization. Yet there is another strain in twentieth-century American fiction that, while not as academically popular, does offer some guidance and vision beyond cynical despair. This dissertation proposes that central to this strain is the complex and morally challenging work of Walker Percy. The study closes with an examination of how three of Percy's novels, The Moviegoer (1960), The Last Gentleman (1966), and The Second Coming (1980) attempt to re-assert the power of the individual to make moral choices in a material world. |
