THE CITY, THE DESERT, THE ROAD: AMERICAN CHRONOTOPES IN DELILLO’S UNDERWORLD

Abstract

In the contemporary discussion of the concept of space, there is a tendency to employ space to make a comment about the society that inhabits it. Regarding this and the prose of the contemporary American authors, the theory of Bakhtin’s chronotope may be one of the most legitimate ways to depict the society of contemporary America. In the fiction of Don DeLillo, one could discuss three typical American chronotopes: the city, the desert, and the road. The said chronotopes may be interpreted within the scopes of Bakhtin’s original chronotopes. They operate on both individual and mutually overlapping levels. In one way or the other, the American chronotopes mentioned seem to function as the ultimate Nowhere, space where the modern characters go to disappear in DeLillo’s prose.