Living With Crisis:Living Dilemma In Don De Lillo’s Underworld

Don De Lillo is one of the most distinguished American writers.As a writer working on serious issues,he creates those works concerned with heated social topics,such as the cold war,nuclear war,environmental contamination,spiritual terror and mass media.In Underworld,with more than 800 pages depicting the living circumstances and spiritual conditions of the half latter of the 20^thcentury,it exposes those unknown and marginal history to readers.By reading this novel,readers are able to reflect those issues of racial discrimination,nuclear competition,waster crisis as well as the corresponding apocalyptic anxiety and fear.So this thesis will investigate the crisis manifested in Underworld by virtue of relative theories,so as to reveal the spiritual terror and fear generated by consumerism,technology rationality and increasing waste,thus stimulating people’s reflection of human beings’living plight.The thesis is divided into three parts with introduction,main body and conclusion.Introduction mainly introduces the writer Don De Lillo along with Underworld,as well as literature review and the general outline of this thesis.The main part consists of four sections.The first one delves into underlying reason causing crisis.The second part mainly discusses the spiritual alienation of the novel under the propaganda of consumerism and cold war science and technology rationality.In Underworld,people gradually lose their rationality under the impact of various commodities.Confronted with diversified markets,advertisements and explosive information,the public’s ability of subjective judgment and independent thinking has been weakened;the demand for commodities is more out of the pursuit of symbols;in the shadow of the cold war,the state tries to convince the public of the importance of science and technology and nuclear weapons production,and people are increasingly engaged with technological production under the persuasion of scientific and technological rationality,which in turn,shows people’s spiritual emptiness and cold war paranoia.The third part focuses on the loss of subjectivity,and discusses people’s doubt and uncertainty about self-identity in the society of consumerism and rapid development of media.The increasingly developed commodity society,on one hand,has brought great convenience to people’s life,but on the other hand,it has alienated people’s consumption psychology,thus losing their sense and belief.The fourth part focuses on the ecological crisis.The Underworld depicts the situation that the natural environment of postmodern society is seriously threatened.The nuclear waste caused by the arms race and the domestic waste caused by the prevalence of consumption all pose a great threat to people’s living space and quality of life.Therefore,this chapter mainly discusses the era of technology and consumerism,the contradiction and harmony between human progress and ecological environment.The last part of the main body is conclusion,which will summarize the core theme of the thesis from a macro perspective and summarize the crisis in the Underworld.