A Review of the Cold War in Underworld (1997), by Don DeLillo

• Grant number: 10/20587-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2011
• End date: March 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Giséle Manganelli Fernandes
• Grantee: Marcela Do Valle Liasch
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims at analyzing the novel Underworld (1997), by Don DeLillo, in order to verify how the author reviews the Cold War period in the United States. The text starts on October 3, 1951, in the famous match-up between two baseball rivals, the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. While the game is happening, the Soviet Union launches an atomic test. This fact sets the Cold War as the focus of the narrative. Underworld also addresses the Sputnik, the Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Vietnam War. In the novel, historical figures, such as J. Edgar Hoover (then Director of the FBI), whose image is subverted, appear together with fictional characters. In Underworld, DeLillo shows his critical approach towards a system incapable of promoting social justice through the life of Esmeralda, a poor child who ends up having a tragic death. The novel brings about the nostalgia for a pre-Cold War time that would never be back again. Thus, through the narrative strategies employed by DeLillo and theories on the relationship between Literature and History (Hutcheon 1988,1993; White, 1985), this investigation will reevaluate official History, examining the author's criticism towards facts that established and, to a certain extend, still determine the course of his country as a superpower.