An Analysis of hyperreality in John Fowles’s the magus and Paul Auster’s moon palace

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2019

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Önal, Özlem

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Jean Baudrillard claims that the postmodern individual lives in “the desert of the real” (Simulacra 1) where there is no absolute reality anymore as the endless proliferation of simulacra marks the end of reality and truth, leading to the emergence of hyperreality. The aim of this thesis is to study the way hyperreality can be explored in two postmodern novels which are John Fowles’s The Magus: A Revised Version (1977) and Paul Auster’s Moon Palace (1989) and to state that an escape from hyperreality is probable. According to this study the absence of reality results from a distorted and fragmented concept of historicity, as the contemporary individual can no longer form any sort of bond with the past. The abyss of rootlessness; therefore, is tended to be filled by a superficial and copycat present resembling Andy Warhol style pop-art images. In such a universe, where there is no room for any kind of divergence, every postmodern subject ends up being just like the millions of others, but alone. Therefore, the mundane and prosaic condition of the contemporary world eventually creates the world of hyperreality, where everything seems to be more intriguing and less arid than the so-called ‘desert of the real’ outside. However, within the scope of this study it is claimed that the postmodern individual grows tired of the discernable artificiality of hyperreality and seeks to rediscover the real or to face the desert of meaning and truth left behind by the absence of the real.

Subject Keywords

Keywords: Hyperreality, simulacrum, Jean Baudrillard, John Fowles, Paul Auster.

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http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12624040/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/44885

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

Ö. Önal, “An Analysis of hyperreality in John Fowles’s the magus and Paul Auster’s moon palace,” Thesis (M.S.) -- Graduate School of Social Sciences. English literature., Middle East Technical University, 2019.