ABSTRACT
The character of Holden Caulfi eld represents a nascent postmodern identity quest and the novel he narrates an emerging critique of postmodern culture that both serve to illuminate Victor Mancini’s full-fl edged postmodern subjectivity and Choke’s post-millennial acculturation in 2001. While Durden terrorizes the symbolic order in order to fulfi ll the narrator’s schizophrenic vengeance, Victor is psychologically terrorized by postmodern society. We look to Holden as Victor’s emotional precursor to explicate the detrimental effects of the burgeoning inauthentic postmodern culture. Unlike Victor, who was born and bred in the heart of postmodernism’s pathological ideology, Holden can see the spectacle for what it is, empty. Secondly, we differentiate Holden’s self-critical withdrawal and Victor’s near-unquestioning immersion and hyperactive participation in illusion.
