Fragmented Worlds - a Postmodernist perspective of Contemporary Literature and Society

Abstract

Postmodern writing styles merging with socio-cultural qualities of cosmopolitanism and metamodernism have produced literature that is intrinsically distorted and diverse. With characters regularly experiencing psychological insecurities, disillusionment and consumerist victimisation; we often witness stories of fragmentation, identical consumerism and identity crisis all over contemporary literature. The commonality of these stories, especially when focused on modern urban metropolitan locations is what this paper focuses on.

With issues relating disillusionment, self-inflicted isolation, frustration, crisis and a consequent insensitive society especially found in city-spheres; the paper shall attempt to understand the modern problems of lopsided growth in individuals in a world that is becoming more and more self-involved every day. By means of selected texts in literature, the paper shall recognise consumerism based issues of identities thereby collecting and possessing all strands of contemporary postmodernism together.