Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis

Modern Outcasts and an Old Barbershop

Abstract

In Don De Lillo’s Cosmopolis (2003), Eric Packer is a young multi- billionaire who inhabits a homogenising landscape turning individuals into urban waste. Driving safely across New York City into his white stretch limo, he has replaced both his body and personality with hyperreal and luxurious simulacra; he inhabits a self- referential cosmos reflecting a polis where human beings are discarded as active and sensible actors. However, Eric seems ready to renounce his luxurious but aseptic reality and to return to a more human condition; in this novel, an old barbershop becomes the point of departure to restore humanity and fight back the overwhelming urban wasteland.
Eric’s journey back to his truer self is doomed to fail, as he will be killed by his alter ego, Benno Levin. A former employee of Eric, Benno was first demoted then fired by Eric. The two characters are therefore presented as the two sides of the same coin, in fact two self-made outcasts of globalization: they are both playing a role in the new e- capitalism, they are both responsible for what they have become and must face the consequences. Their final epiphany is here turned into a nemesis that translates into their final loss, their final defeat. There is no way out of globalised capitalism.