Don DeLillo's cosmopolis: conceptualizing of Zygmunt Bauman's liquid modernity

. The more we move onward in America’s history, the more the effect of technology and science can be felt quite tangible. To live in the present era makes this even more notable since the age is going through and begetting such pervasive phenomenon like consumerism .The fact is that this notion is strongly propagated in the postmodern era. Families in this era can be vividly identified as the mere slaves of technology and its omnivorous progeny, consumerism. Donald Richard DeLillo as a postmodern author paid a comprehensive attention to this issue of technology and consumerism in his novels. One of the theorists who has extensively written in the field of consumerism is the polish sociologist , Zygmunt Bauman (1929) who in his book Liquid Modernity asserts a new term for the present condition of the world as it is the antithesis of the preceded solid modernity.Surely, the postmodern world owes a great deal of its liquidity to the prevalence and perfection of consumerism. Cosmopolis depicts a society or even more limited, a family or a youngster that is not deliberately, entangled in the ruling of technology and consumerism. What is depicted in Comopolis is a combination of the role and dominance of technology and consumerism to form the sociology of a postmodern individual, family, and society.Also, the primary determinant that is technology, is explored in its relation to the other factors . Due to the candidness of most of his futuristic novels, Don DeLillo’s views show little optimism for success within his fictional postmodern world. He has always been blunt at telling us where American postmodern society is going. This paper aims to expose the America’s society in Cosmopolis which is the materialization of a well-developed consumer society, into the theories and concepts by Zygmunt Bauman.


Introduction
Consumerism is of utmost significance, and it is a notion to be criticized or therefore restricted for the benefit of humanity or our planet earth (Annesley,32).The industrial revolution emancipated the chains of medievalism through its elementary manufacturing processes and the use of machinery in the life of human beings.The industrialization was, first of all, a heavenly passage for creative minds to seek science and practical mathematics and apply them in devising and creating constructive and useful machines.The progression of science and its practicality somehow narrowed the gap between superstitious reasoning behind the facts of life and introduced science as the right justification (O'connor, 178).Evolve of the incipient notion of industrialization manifested itself in the frame of machines and devices which smooth the difficulties and lessened the dominance of altered religion and superstitions that had hindered the flow of science.Little by little, through the various and creative inventions and the vast application of them in the life of human beings a phenomenon called technology emerged.Fairly soon, technology turned to be the criterion of power and dominance in the world and the countries with high technology had this right to rule other technologically undeveloped countries (Annesley,41).
Considering this social-economical phenomenon and ubiquitous ideology that is called Consumerism, we are lead to a colossal world where possession of goods is essential and encouraged by its members.The integral factor that designates consumerism is its emphasis upon consuming in excess of the rudimentary needs and possession of luxurious properties in a way that approximate it to lavish and sumptuous lifestyle.(Blackwell ,73).What has been undergone since the advent of middle-class and revolutionized the life of people over years, has its origins in social transformations of 16 th , 17th and 18 th centuries.As it was mentioned, above the advent of middleclass which arose at the end of 20 th century was concomitant to the stream of globalization and initiated the ideology of consumerism officially.(Annesley,56).The considerable movements through the 20 th century, especially after the Second World War are Post-Fordism and postmodernism.They contributed a lot to the ideology of consumerism in a way that we can assume postmodernism and consumerism as somehow interlocked issues.Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis a 2003 novel, happens in a futuristic society where consumerism policies are fully fledged, and thus we confront a metropolis where people are fed up with the dominance of capitalistic system and want a significant change.Here, it was aimed to focus more on the influence of consumerism than on an individual as the representative of a consumer society in America's postmodern era.Moreover, through the study of it, it could find out traces of consumerism and capitalistic influences, precisely in language (Conte , 44)

Zygmunt Bauman and His Theory of Consumerism
Zygmunt Bauman (1925), is a renowned Polish sociologist, who has had Cardinal contributions to the concept of postmodernism and consumerism.He has done extensive researches concerning the modernity's struggle with ambiguity, postmodern ethics, and postmodern arts and also a critique of liquid modernity.
In Bauman's theory, a consumer society in post-industrial era urges its people to be and stay ahead, it means to be updated with the latest style packs in every field.In other words "the empirical social life is but an expression of sentiments of successive belongings" (2007,88).In other words, there would be no other options but a series of rejections and a terminal exclusion that is the retribution for who does not come up with the ways that the community presents.The most important of which is to accord with the society's consumption policies.In fact, this is the only way to be recognized nowadays.For instance, Bauman focuses on fashion as one of the widespread and popular issues in a consumer society, he utilizes an advertisement in an influential and respected handbook for the new style pack.In this context, Bauman exemplifies a notion that "the sentiment of belonging is not obtained by following the procedure administered and supervised by those style packs to which one aspires, but through the aspirant's own metonymical identification with the pack" (2007,90).When aspirants follow this procedure of self-identification, the consequences will be exhibited with the help perceptible marks of belonging which are available as a rule in the shops.
If we juxtapose an original primitive tribe and a postmodern society we can realize that "emblematic figures and their visible marks replace the totems of the original tribe" (Bauman,101).Being ahead in sporting the "emblems of the style pack's emblematic figures" (Beilharz,109) is the only reliable prescription for achieving this notion.If the style pack were conscious of its aspirant's being, it would fulfill the desired identification and acceptance.In other side, staying ahead is the only way to acknowledge our belonging as something secure and guaranteed for the duration that we have desired.The necessity of being ahead in a consumer society foreshadows an elevated chance of security and certainty.The greater the certainty of safety, precisely those kind of characteristics which the consuming life strives for but have always been failed to achieve.When we are referred to the notion of being ahead of the style pack, automatically something like an assurance of a high market value and a multitude of demand pass through our minds (Conte,79).
The advertisement of new pack style for autumn-winter 2005, which was mentioned earlier offered "half a dozen key looks for the coming months that will put your head off the style pack" (Annesley,74).As it is clear, the first concern of the ad was to put its customer ahead, a notion that we examined it above and Its second target was the time.The ad has limited the user by date to the coming months and no longer.The designer has cleverly tempted the desire of readers to rush into their markets to enhance their situation in the market.However, if we look at it deeply, we notice that it does accord with the experience of something like the pointillist time that is "composed of instants, of fixed-term episodes and new starts" (Blackwell,78).It extricates the present that was destined to be fully investigated and abused, from the diversions of past and future.This emancipation, challenges the concentration and impair the elation of a free choice or somehow it proffers.Bauman regards it as "a double bonus of being momentarily up-to-date while simultaneously carrying a safeguard against falling behind in the future" (2007,80).So this message

88
Volume 60 indicates a warning that if we immediately follow what it has recommended to us, again we are dependent to the next coming months style pack and must acquire it and stay renewed.Slowness here has a direct relationship with forgetting or in the "liquid modern world, slowness portends social death" (Bauman,82).As far as all the people in a consumer society keep on progressing and are afraid of getting behind of the flow of technology, those inattentive ones will be separated by an increasing gap.
The third target of that ad is the kind of freedom of choices that it gives.However, he or she, unconsciously knows that what is going to be done is due to the peril of exclusion and the failure of recognition and nor he is permitted to affect the range of alternatives that have been provided for him.We can come to this conclusion that although we are free to select from the choices that are available we must not forget that making that choice is compulsory.
"All the same, in consumer culture, choosing and freedom, are two names of the same condition; and treating them as synonymous is correct at least in the senses that you can abstain from choosing only by at the same time surrendering your freedom" (Bauman,85).
To compare the consumerist society with its predecessor that is the productivist one, we can see the consumerist society's cultural syndrome is much more prominent.As far as it does hold together the assemblage of various stimulants, intuitions, and affinities.This case looks to be "the reversal of the values attached respectively to duration and transience" (Bauman,91).Actually, what did we have as axiological pillars in a society of producers when the productivist syndrome ruled it, are the virtue of procrastination and the kind of desirability of the delay of gratification.These two figures are now denied and neglected by the emergence of the consumerist cultural syndrome in the postmodern era.In this assumed hierarchy of acknowledged values, the consumerist syndrome has cheapened duration and ennobled transience.It is conspicuous that the merit of product's novelty is situated above its lastingness or generally speaking.This syndrome has shortened the time span.This shortening of time happens not only when it concerns about the time span attributed to the interval between want and fulfillment.Notwithstanding, it does include the birth moment of the desire as well as the realization of them as usefulness (Beilharz,29).Another feature of this symptom is that the act of appropriation is accompanied with waste and discarding of a commodity that was used to be resistant and possessed an enduring satisfaction.
The consumerist syndrome sets down preventatives against the practicability of things that are "outstaying their welcome in place of the technique holding them fast and of long-term attachment.It also shortens the life expectation desire and the distance in time from a desire to its gratification and gratification to the waste disposal tip" (Bauman, 100).We might say, through what we have gotten till here that the consumerist syndrome is mostly about speed, excess, and waste.It is not suppressing to us if we come to understand that an experienced consumer in a consumerist society is not fastidious about discarding things to waste.As a matter of fact, not only they have said yes to this short lifespan of items, moreover, have received them as a rule in their society that are living.However, they reckon getting rid of a commodity that its use-by is ended, is as an incident to be delighted.For that experienced consumer, "the value of each and every object lies equally in its virtues and its limitations.The shortcomings already were known and those yet to be revealed thanks to their preordained obsolescence promise an imminent renewal and rejuvenation" (Bauman,86).This kind of careful attentiveness toward commodity and consumption verifies this prospect that in a society of consumers, perfectness could be only a cumulative quality of the mass and an assemblage of objects and desire.In this situation, the persistent impel that was beforehand focused on perfection in the productivist society, now cares much less for enhancement in things rather than for their abundance and rapid spreading.In Bauman's words, a consumer society "cannot but be a society of excess and profligacy and so of redundancy and prodigal waste.The more fluid their life settings, the more objects of potential consumption are needed by the actors to ensure their actions against the pranks of fate" (Bauman,87).

International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 60
Access, is undeniably one of the fruits of a consumerist society and thus a post-industrial one that was intended to eradicate or at least attenuate the uncertainty of choices but does intensify it remarkably.Theoretically, the real life of individuals in a consumer society are "to remain infinite succession of trials and errors.Theirs are lives continuous experimentation -yet offering little hope of crisis that might guide the experimenters on to a reliably land of certainty" (Bauman,91).The notion certifies the fact that in this society one must obey the golden rule that is the consumerist society's rationality.This rule, according to Bauman is to hedge your bets.It means to avoid to commit as long as one is facing a difficult and confusing choice.This warning directly refers to the fact that in the affiliated community that we were discussing issues, life's equations are mainly formed with variables and a paucity of constants.Variables modify their values frequently and quickly which makes it impossible to keep the track of their alternations let alone predicting their upcoming twists and turns.
When the politicians of United States announces that their country is a free one, it means that "it is up to you what sort of life you wish to live, how you decide to live it, and what kinds of choices you make in order to see your project through; blame yourself and no one else, if all that does not result in bliss you hoped for " (Bauman ,94).We might say, somehow, it implies the fact that the ecstasy of emancipation and the fright of defeat are entwined.This fact indicates that possession of freedom is under the condition of confronting unpredictable risks and adventures that may result in defeat and shattering the certainty of boredom.On the other side, the adventure itself can be regarded as the sign of the humiliation of disaster and somehow the consequent deprivation of self-confidence."When its risks, played down on the road to adventure, becomes evident once it is under way, boredom, the deprecated bane of certainty, will tend to be forgotten and forgiven" (Bauman,97).We may come to this conclusion that the materialization of freedom in the consumer society is inclined to be considered as a stimulating act of emancipation.It does not matter whether the emancipation is from distressing obligations, annoying prescriptions or boring routines.Now, imagine a society that has just escaped from the dungeon of certainty and boredom but quite soon as freedom settles in, it will turn into another daily routine and promises the arrival of a new kind of horror no less frightening than the one it was supposed to banish and that is the horror of responsibility.So the nights that are waiting are filled with the dreams of freedom from responsibility that substituted the days of obligatory choices.It was those physical hazards and spiritual anxieties that somehow impelled the formation of an authority to support and observe a framework consisted of regulations, standards, limitations, and sanctions.They are Designed and advanced by philosophers in the incipient years of modernist transformation.Hobbes articulated the first notion of this framework, and Durkheim nurtured.In the middle of 20 th century it "presented societal coercion and the constraints imposed by normative regulation on individual freedom as a necessary, inevitable freedom as a necessary and beneficial means of protecting human togetherness against war of all against all" (Bauman,120).The termination of this coercion not only would not extricate individuals from their brand new prison but also will lead them to be weak in front of the anti-social instincts and morbid promptings of their within, that devilishly threaten public health.Freud, however, confirms this essentiality as well by stating that civilization without coercion is unthinkable.
On April of 2003, Scribner published Cosmopolis, which is Don DeLillo's 13 th novel.The narrative revolves around the story of an antihero named Erick Packer, an extremely wealthy young manager who aimlessly decides to get a haircut somewhere in Manhattan.So he drives through Manhattan in his sumptuous automobile that is bulletproofed and has dozens of computer and television screens (Martucci ,83).Another symbolic quality of his automobile is that it does not let the outside sound and noise permeate inside which de facto can be interpreted symbolically.In this urbane, postmodern and purposeless voyage, Erick will be confronted with many incidents such as the president's visit to the city and the heavy traffic that interfered his departure.We also see the demonstrations against capitalist policies by people who are fed up with injustice and the class differences and the burial of a Muslim rapper.The novel informs us about Packer's instability in his wedlock, and we have the chance to know about his short married life with his wife whom he

90
Volume 60 had the opportunity to visit.Don DeLillo shows him as someone lecherous who performs sexual intercourse with women he let enter his limousine.Two men try their chances to assassinate Packer.
We can consider only one of them a plausible assassination that put his life in danger.The other one was more a disparaging action to defame his status as a representative of capitalism or in our case consumerism.Don DeLillo tried to expose a billionaire whom himself shares a big deal in progressing the notion of consumerism and changing it to a dominant ideology (Conte,50).His critical contribution is why the afflicted people are raging at him.In a one-hour street journey, we see two assassinations and lots of street's objections and vituperations.
Cosmopolis happens at the turn of the century, a futuristic novel that happens in Manhattan in the fourth month of the year.The place, where the novel takes place is limited, and we do not see any variation as the whole story takes place in Erick's luxurious limousine.This endows a sentiment of the survey to the essence of the novel and displays it as a purposeful that is determined scrutinize the worldly or more precisely materialistic aspects of the society.Eric Packer, a multi-billionaire in his youth is the main character in the novel that is the representative of the exhilarating crust of a consumerist society.The city, as the context, is also the actualization of a metropolis where is considered to be the Promised Land of commercial or on aggregate monetary upheavals.Don DeLillo in this novel depicts a postmodern society where all the consumerist policies are full-fledged and now are on the threshold of endangering the society they had been installed.Although the novel takes place in the year 2000, there are some elements of anachronism that invigorate the anticipating quality of the novel.They can be considered as the warning to the current situation of all the capitalist or more detailed consumerist societies (Conte , 77).
Bauman's perspective in his book Liquid Modernity refers to postmodernity as the contemporary modernity that is divided into two parts of early and late modernity.Perhaps the role of time and space in this era is the most notable peculiarity that had been inseparable but neutral in premodernity.The primary period of modernity elevated the contribution of time in a way that it was devised to subjugate space.In other words time was considered as the most important or leading implement of power and therefore dominance (Beilharz,39).Time was in charge of organizing and controlling the modern space and regulating the life of human beings in that space.So what mattered in the early phase of modernity was to enhance the temporal aspects of progress.Somehow the velocity was considered as the sole apparatus of development that was aimed to achieve a distinct advantageous dominance over materiality.Domination was maintained through taming space that is sharing the products and deploying the soldiers, restricting the workers in factories by utilizing various policies.The attention to conducting the time and managing the material things and workforce, consist the ecology of modernity in Bauman's perspective.Bauman attributes the latest changes and revolutionary modifications that are categorized as postmodernism to the second phase of modernity.This modification is destined to accelerate the velocity of the current phase to preserve time and acquire the dominance over space.However, it does not consider the second phrase's natural speed suffice.This is why the postmodern era is determined to design tools that are novel in saving time by having more extreme velocity.That is why speedy electronic trains, jet traveling, and cars are symbols of power, to summarize it, in postmodern era power is immediate.Power penetration into materialistic aspects of life has brought about an ephemeral station for power.Every day productions surpass the preceding ones in saving time and conducting space.There are two indisputable elements of postmodern logic toward life, and there is an enslaved life under the ruling of technology and consumerism.They are the most galvanizing essentials in appetizing society to stay tuned in order not to stay behind from the latest updates (Beilharz,63).
Cars are appraised to be one of the most charming productions of the post-industrial world that beyond their quality to facilitate human being's daily needs are considered to have alluring attractions.The car's possession is the sheer representation of freedom, liberation, power and wealth.From the other point of view, the car is not just the means of transportation and luxury.It is the primary participant of a worldwide network of production and thus consumption that has accompanied structure of roads and urban traffic.Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis illustrates the International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 60 incarceration of the possessor in financial obligations and routine drudgeries although this cage like bliss is the emblem of an elevated social class and prosperity.Car industry owes its desirable circumstance to the conditions that the consumerist society has provided.In fact, this kind of an unfathomable concern of people toward buying cars and changing them regularly by their last changes is the indisputable legacy of consumerism policies.The contended circumstance was dangling between quenching a magnificent object of desire and a substantial environmental catastrophe.This novel has delicately mentioned the city's overcrowding and the paucity or the even deprivation of unblocked street, roads, and highways (Beilharz ,43).The fact that an automobile is the harbinger of power, prestige and dominance is incarnated in the Eric Packer's character.The author has also done his best to apprise the reader about the advent of a thoroughly digitized world which is detrimental to the currently ruling industry of automobile.He had added a tinge of pervasive enthusiasm among people in post-second world war decades, an era when possession of the car for proletarians meant the same freedom and prestige that postmodern citizens aspire.
The automobile industry is something more than a simple product and a typical object manufactured by an industrial society that signifies the existence of consumerism policies in there.If Bauman claims that car industry is not an ordinary production because he is cognizant of its influence over various aspects of life.As we observed in the first chapter, we equate postmodernism with post-Fordism.Post-Fordism connotes the revolution in producing the automobiles in a postmodern era that is one of the influential causes of postmodernism or features of a post-industrial epoch (O'connor, 71).Aside societal and graceful aspects of automobiles, they have a considerable efficacy upon petroleum and therefore on the economic pulse of the world.Bauman mentions the joyful driving in a non-compound and the unadorned automobile that was dedicated to those incipient years of the invention of them or post-war decades when consumerism had not been fixated in all social classes of society.Bauman simulates driving in a metropolis to a boring queue for an airplane ticket plus the options that one is deprived of when he or she is trapped in a traffic jam in his or her luxurious car.Space, as it was observed, is an element subjugated by time in the early phase of modernism.The latter in the current stage of modernism is in the charge of intensifying velocity to preserve itself to run an enhanced digitalized lifestyle for the postmodern human being.(2000,63).The issue of traffic jams and clogged streets in Cosmopolis is the actualization of Bauman's anticipation as we read in Cosmopolis.The consumerist society due to its inverted values and through its advertisements has forced its inhabitants to possess cars that would precipitate their daily actions and could bring about a more secure time.This service is in return for an invaded space, although quite equally the invaded space did prevent Packer from getting his haircut that is not an emergency task at all.This issue of traffic jam and crowded street has been mentioned in novel for more than 25 times: The car stopped dead, and he got out and stretched.Traffic ahead was a long liquid shimmer of idling metal.He saw Torval walking toward him… This.We have flood conditions in the streets ahead.The State of Chaos.This.The question of the president and his whereabouts.He is fluid.He is moving.Moreover, wherever he goes, our satellite receiver reports a ripple effect on the traffic that causes mass paralysis.This also.There is a funeral proceeding slowly downtown and now deflecting westward.Many vehicles, numerous mourners on foot.Moreover, finally this.We have a report of imminent activity in the area (78).
Apparently Cosmopolis takes place in a car, the unity of place and time in the novel is reminding of ancient Greek plays and Aristotelian decorum in which the story starts and finishes in just one day.The luxurious white limousine is the representative of the wealthy class of people who are doomed to a life without any unfulfilled wishes.They are now passing their lives like the same limousine.It moves, but it does not get into anywhere.What Bauman refers to as the reason for people's thirst for buying cars is simulated as the escaping route from the chains of the industrialism's constraints and drudgeries to a temporary shining toward liberation (2000,118).This driving time in a sumptuous car unbounds the passengers from the everydayness.For some hours, it

92
Volume 60 liberates them from repetitive tasks and duties and weakens the fear of death by digressing their attention to the passing road, sceneries and nature .This notion by Bauman can conceptualized in Eric's sudden desire to get a haircut that can be regarded as an excuse to shelter in his soundproofed automobile: The car ran into stalled traffic before it reached Second Avenue.He sat in the club chair at the rear of the cabin looking into the array of visual display units.There were medleys of data on every screen, all the flowing symbols and alpine charts, the polychrome numbers pulsing.He absorbed this material in a couple of long still seconds, ignoring the speech sounds that issued from lacquered heads.There were a microwave and a heart monitor.
Bauman's insist on the concept that automobilization of society is the display of power, and thus a subcategory of consumerism is mirroring in packer's character.When his white limousine is accosted with other similar cars on the First Avenue although all of them had the badge of their owners on themselves blossomed a reflection of power and dominance in him.However, Eric's conformity to the role of the automobile in his life is somehow unobserved for himself.However, he is cognizant of the consequences that it can have upon social and cultural and moreover on the discourses of power: He liked the fact that the cars were indistinguishable from each other.He wanted such a car because the thought of it was a platonic replica, weightless for all its size, less an object than an idea.However, he knew this was not true.This was something he said for effect, and he did not believe it for an instant.Zygmunt Bauman, in Liquid Modernity, tries to introduce automobile as something transcendent that has been dropped from heavens like an immaculate female deity.Among all the industrious productions, automobiles are possessed with a peculiar sanctity that signifies a messenger from the world beyond ours.Its purity covers the materialistic dimensions of the car as an object.It as if that Automobile's magical components are not fused to each other but are gently set side by side.Bauman goes on to say that this holiness would lose its dignity when is touched by terrestrial individuals.This fact, Bauman asserts, conjures up what Jesus ordered in his cradle to his virgin mother, that 'don't touch me'.This Christ-like characteristic of the automobile is defamed or somehow cracked when the after its show time, it will be raped by groups of enchanted customers.This heavenly object, Bauman says, will be prostituted and degenerated into the most common and run-of-the-mill products.Packer is determined to regard this transmundane, and mystical quality of his automobile as true but, unfortunately, could sustain this perception for quite a short time.The allure of automobile that has bewitched Packer is indirectly the allure of consumerism in a new way and shape.This allurement has brought about power and dominance for him in a way that nothing can stand in his way.Moreover, this, in Bauman's words is what he calls 'fake spirit.'His chief of security liked the car for its anonymity.Long white limousines had become the most unnoticed vehicles in the city.He was waiting on the sidewalk now, Torval, bald and no-necked, a man whose head seemed removable for maintenance.
"I want a haircut.""The president is in town.""We do not care.We need a haircut.We need to go crosstown" (DeLillo, 2006, 300).
Bauman has always referred to consumerism as pervasive and dominant in the postmodern era, by pervasive he means something that doesn't leave even an inch of its adherent personal life to be without the effect of consumerism.Bauman thinks of consumerism as a shadow that has cast its International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 60 being upon the world of modern people.The white limousine as it was observed above is the sheer example and representative of consumerism in Cosmopolis.As we have read, Packer is subjected to various kinds of medical check-ups, it is where he pursues his office tasks and even a place for his sexual intercourses: Ingram folded the examining table back into the cabinet.He packed his satchel and went out the door, turning briefly to look at Eric.He was stationary, only a couple of feet away, but already lost in the crowd, forgotten even as he spoke, wide-eyed, with studied detachment in his voice.

Conclusion
Being steeped in commodities and attention toward luxuries were in the spirit of the postwar people.They were emancipated from a half of a century filled with misfortune and disgrace (Martucci,115).Moreover, thus after the second world war and due to the increase in employment and marriage, there was a very significant interest in using the technology in favor of convenience and sumptuousness instead of war and calamity.The international peace, if we save Vietnam war, in the following decades after the second world war, provided an ambiance for its inhabitants to be propelled toward a luxurious lifestyle even without a trace of utility.This attitude was intensified through the ongoing decades (Martucci,9).As the narrative and characters of Don Delillo's Cosmopolis display, there is a vivid entanglement of postmodern inhabitants in the dictating norms and habits of societies that are plagued by consumerism dominancy.
In Cosmopolis where Packer is deeply steeped in technology and consumerism and we do not see in anywhere of the novel that he cares about moral codes.Seemingly, the only issue that had mattered to him was his automobile and investments in various conditions.He even doesn't care for his fellow citizenships who are sick of economic injustice and are fed up with the policies.They are on riot to show their disapproval, but Packer as a representative of an individual who is under the severe influence of consumerism has equipped his automobile with a soundproof condition (Conte,51).We may consider two idols in Cosmopolis.One is Packer that tries to introduce himself parentless and secure against misfortunes and calamities.He even attributes his death as the end of the world, not himself.Like what was explained about Don DeLillo's White Noise and the kind of transgression that Jack Gladney showed toward the norms and system that he his living in, we have in Cosmopolis a similar disobedience.Packer, in my idea, joins the mass of people who are against the injustice and infringe.Jack's long covenant with the dominant policy of postmodernism that is incarnated through consumerism and an omnipotent technology that has shaded over his life.Eric shows his transgression by getting out and leaving his automobile behind which was representative of the promise he was keeping to remain an immortal idol (Martucci,46) .After leaving the automobile behind, Packer kills Torval , his hired bodyguard that somehow gives the impression of that Torval guards Packer to not let him escape the fortress of consumerism and keeps him imprisoned there.Packer feels unbounded and free afterward: Torval was his enemy, a threat to his self-regard.When you pay a man to keep you alive, he gains a psychic edge.It was a function of the credible threat and the loss of his company and a personal fortune that Eric could express himself this way.Torvalds's passing cleared the night for deeper confrontation (DeLillo, 2000, 218).Don DeLillo tries to warn and through the ending of the novel he gives us the impression that we can still be hopeful of a riot or a spark for inconsistency.Consumerism and technology, through advertisement and media, have lobotomized American citizens, but Don DeLillo considers a societal reformation through an individual vigilance like what happened within Erick Packer.The kind of dominance that consumerism has upon the American inhabitants have turned them to be like puppets who are under the thorough control of their brand new idol (O'connor, 29).This

94
Volume 60 enslavement has coerced the Americans to seek for shelter and solace among the new policies and productions of the same consumerism.Jack Gladney and his family's perpetual wanderings in department stores and their enthusiasm in buying more commodities are the harbingers of a distorted identity.Americans, seek to fix their identities in buying more and more.(O'Connor , 14).The same consumerism that had changed their individualities has now become their only solution.
Like the omnipotent God, consumerism is omnipresent.Everywhere in American's life, there is a trace of addiction or inclination toward consumption and technology.Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis as a critique, calls us to think conventional assumptions among people about technology, consumerism, media and the materialization of power in a postmodern culture of America.Don DeLillo aims to enable us to revise our conclusions about the difference between technology in favor of humanity and one against it.He wants us to recognize and annihilate the threats of the enslavement of mankind (Martucci,57).In his odyssey, Packer did not reach any concrete destination even couldn't make his way to the barbershop to get a haircut.What mattered in his journey are the spiritual elevation and physical freedom that he achieved through his within awakening.A novelist like Don DeLillo or a sociologist like Bauman that propagates the notion of automobility are not radical against technology.We have numerous theories by Bauman that allude to the necessity of the existence of both technology and consumerism in a society.However,nowadays tehnology and consumerism have exceeded their boundaries and have brought about calamity instead of prosperity through isolation of morality and inherent values of humanity.