Postmodern Social In/Justice in Don DeLillo’s Underworld

The present study illustrates DeLillo’s Underworld from a Social Justice perspective. In his major parks, John Rawls, a Harvard University professor, has written about a well-ordered society and a utopian world. In contrast, Don DeLillo, in Underworld, asserts, because of paranoia, waste, warfare, etc., there is no social justice today. Underworld is, in fact, an attempt to account for the emergence of paranoia as a significant feature of American national identity during the Cold War. The novel jumps between times periods ranging from 1951 to the early 1990s. The settings range across America, including New York, Arizona, and Minnesota. Individual conflicts, in this novel, occur beneath the wider context of the Cold War. Postmodern events are examined in this novel to find out if these events are compatible with the utopian world Rawls has asserted, and to explore if a just society is observed today. Paranoia, waste, and warfare are considered the central reference in this novel. Although the tone is distant and detached, DeLillo effectively evokes the Cold War mood of fear and uncertainty. Hence, the main target of this paper is to illustrate there is no social justice in this paranoid postmodern culture.