Don DeLillo’s Sociological Poetics in Mao II

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This essay aims to examine how the critical socioeconomic, political issues around the world, such as modernity, postmodernity, crowdism, and terrorism are treated in Mao II. To that end, as the best model that allows us to discuss a protagonist’s ideological formation, this paper deals with the novel’s protagonist who establishes his thoughts with others through the concept of Bakhtinian dialogic interaction model. It analyzed the dialogic interactions focusing on Bill Gray, a modernist novelist, Karen Janney, a member of the crowd, and George Haddad, as a Maoist, in order to examine their interactions with each other and others. Through this analysis, this paper found that their interactions are far from being what M. M. Bakhtin would call dialogic interactions. For example, even though Haddad is talking about terrorism, Bill’s answers have little to do with the subject. As another example, Karen just acts without dialogic relations with others, such as when she goes among the homeless in Tompkins Square Park. Likewise, George talks a lot about justifying sociopolitical issues like terrorism, but refuses to listen to and admit Bill’s belief as an individualist. In short, it can be said that the kind of dialogic interactions that would lead to a balanced conclusion rarely occur in Mao II. These dogmatic claims or acquiescence are thought to cause the decrease of the text’s persuasiveness.