The Omnipresence of Television and the Ascendancy of Surveillance/Sousveillance in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

This paper is an attempt to analyze Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451(1953) under the light of Jean Baudrillard's notions on the media and the influences it exerts on people's daily lives, and with an eye to Michel Foucault's surveillance as well. The title-mentioned work, it is suggested, portrays a representative sample of a culture where different fields including books, education, and history fall under the influence of the media. Bradbury presents a society in which its inhabitants are bombarded with excessive data transmitted through television most of which is detrimental and not reliable. It is concluded that the presented culture in the novel is a microcosm of contemporary societies where authorities keep their subjects under control, engendering an atmosphere of anxiety, trepidation and apprehension for subversive forces and therefore preclude any disturbance on the part of the

Simulated National Identity and Ascendant Hyperreality in Julian Barnes’s England, England

The paper sets out to analyze Julian Barnes’s novel England, England (1998) in the light of Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of simulation and hyperreality. According to Baudrillard, what we experience in today’s world is a simulation of reality superseded by signs and images, and therefore we are living in a hyperreal world. Barnes’s book offers a representative sample of hyperreal world in which Martha, the protagonist, finds herself troubled. Although initially she is impressed by the glamour of the theme park named England, England later on she loses interest in it when she comes to realization that everything about it is fake. This condition, making her think of her own identity and true self, finally leads her to leave the theme park and settle in the village of Anglia where she hopes to discover her true nature and regain her lost happiness