Based on the findings of the present study, the use of multimodal texts has a significant impact on Iranian intermediate learners' reading comprehension achievement. It is worth mentioning that the students with high level of reading proficiency had better performance than did the other students. Using multimodal texts created more joy among the students who used multimodal texts. The role of the teachers should not be taken for granted here. Raising a learner's reading comprehension ability requires language teachers to identify the major factors that influence the reader’s comprehension ability. Taylor et al (2000) noted that students have some particular characteristics that can limit or improve their capacity to comprehend text. These characteristics comprise the reader's attention span, short-term memory, reasoning skills, motivation, knowledge of comprehension strategies, ability to concentrate and decode meaning, grammatical knowledge, and background schemata. Taylor et al (2000) introduced attention span as an important factor in a student's reading success. Through attention span, a reader can identify a meaningful connection between two elements if he/ she sees them at the same time.
Block and Pressley (2002) stressed that existing research points to the fact that teachers must teach valid and accurate comprehension strategies to enhance students’ reading comprehension. It should be noted that appropriate modeling develop students' comprehension success. In their book "Integrating Language Arts through Literature and Thematic Units", Roe and Ross (2006) recommended that teachers should teach one or two strategies to students rather than many strategies to decrease the risk of confusion. Furthermore, teachers should represent strategic techniques in a real-life reading setting to engage the students in authentic activities (Roe & Ross, 2006). In such an authentic atmosphere, students can learn reading strategies to improve their ability to comprehend texts if they receive proper, explicit, and direct instruction.
It should be kept in mind that Iranian language learners, like any other foreign language learners, have limited vocabulary knowledge. Therefore, the use of multimodal texts by language teachers can help language learners predict the content better leading to more effective long-lasting comprehension. As a result, learners who learn with words and pictures learn reading content more effectively and remember it better. The result of the study implies that guessing
the story content from pictures was highly effective in increasing the learners’ reading comprehension ability.
Chayaburakul (2003) maintained that pictures provide implication for the reader to make intelligent guessing.
Reading pictures motivate the readers and capture their attention to the content of reading materials as well as reading tasks. Bowen (1982) explained that variation of pictures stimulates language learners' thinking process to gain a far better understanding of the reading passage.
The findings of this study manifested the great need to include a wide range of multimodal instructional materials, associated with digital communication environments, which are required for meaningful participation in a changing society (Mills, 2006). Teachers need to use innovative digital technologies and new literacy pedagogies to improve reading ability of second language learners. The findings also indicated that multimodal learning is more effective than traditional unimodal learning due to the fact that adding visuals to verbal learning can result in significant gains in higher-order learning. Multimodal instructional materials facilitate reading comprehension process through the interaction between texts and images. Multimodal texts, especially non-printed texts improve learners’ pronunciation due to providing language learners with the opportunity to listen to the texts. Multimodal texts also increase language learners' motivation to process reading comprehension texts. Second language learners, who use multimodal texts, are more motivated to deeply process reading texts than those who use linear texts.
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International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature ISSN 2200-3592 (Print), ISSN 2200-3452 (Online) Vol. 4 No. 4; July 2015
Australian International Academic Centre, Australia
Don Delillo’s Point Omega; Ecstasy and Inertia in a Hyperreal World: A Baudrillardian Reading
Faeze Yegane (Corresponding author)
Department of English Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Iran E-mail: faeze.yegane87@yahoo.com
Farid Parvaneh
Department of English Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Qom Branch, Iran
Received: 13-12- 2014 Accepted: 13-02- 2015 Advance Access Published: February 2015 Published: 01-07- 2015 doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.171 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.171
Abstract
This paper aims to present a Baudrillardian reading of Don Delillo’s Point Omega in the framework of Baudrillard’s definition of the contemporary world as ‘hyperreal’ and also his twin concepts of ‘ecstasy and inertia’. According to Baudrillard, the contemporary time is the hyperreal era in which subjects do not have access to ‘real’ primarily because they are supplied with the ‘simulations’ first and then with the ‘real’ entity and probably never confronted with the
‘real’ itself through media, advertisements, and virtual world. Thus, the perception they have from incidents, objects, places and even other people is ‘hyperreal’; edited, censored, beautified and exaggerated versions of reality; more real than real. In this study Point Omega will be examined as Delillo’s ‘hyperreal’ version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho since the movie is screened in the course of the novel and despite the similarities between the novel and the movie they end contrastingly. Symbolically ‘real’ is not found in the novel due to ‘Mobius spiraling negativity’ which is one of the features of Baudrillard’s definition of ‘hyperreal’ age. Baudrillard believes in the triumph of objects over subjects.
While the object’s world is perpetually cultivating frenziedly, objects and technologies begin to dominate the stupefied subjects consequently he states when the objects are moving toward their ‘ecstasy’, the subjects are stricken in ‘inertia’.
This supremacy of objects and technologies will be displayed in Point Omega regarding Richard Elster’s inert behavior and reaching the ‘omega point’ that Teilhard de Chardin envisions for human race is rendered impossible due to Elster’s destiny in the framework of Baudrillard’s concept of evolution.
Keywords: Ecstasy, Inertia, Hyperreality, Baudrillard, Don Delillo, Point Omega, Omega Point, Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred Hitchcock.
1. Introduction
Richard Elster, the central character of Point Omega is a retired scholar who has worked in Pentagon for two years to conceptualize the Iraq war. He is spending his retirement forlorn in a desert to distance himself from what Baudrillard calls the ‘hyperreal’ ecstatic world of objects and ‘simulations’, on the other hand he aspires to reach the ‘omega point’
that Teilhard de Chardin defines. Jim Finely, a documentary film maker, and Elster’s daughter, Jessie, also accompany him in his solitary withdrawal. But out of the blue one day Jessie disappears and there aren’t any traces which help others to detect her. There are two ‘anonymity’ sections in the beginning and ending of the novel in which an anonymous man watches Douglas Gordon’s 24Hour Psycho in the museum for consecutive hours and some links between Jessie and the anonymous watcher can be noted but which ultimately remain obscure. The affinities and the differences between the events which take place in Point Omega and in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho would be clarified in the framework of Baudrillard’s definition of ‘hyperreal’ era.
2. Theoretical Framework
Baudrillard claims that the contemporary era is ‘hyperreal’ in which the references to real are lost and people are confronted with ‘simulations’. “The era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials”. (Simulacra and Simulation, 1994, p. 2) When simulations expand in television and computers, their references to social, political and historical realities are lost and they instead refer to each other. Therefore, the depth and meaning is vanished and the individuals are only presented with the spectacle and not reality and meaning. He states that in the age of ‘ecstasy’ of meaning subjects are confronted with abundant information and superfluous meaning which creates a kind of ‘nebula’, the ‘entropy’ of excessive information and media messages , that results in the disappearance of meaning and renders the subjects stupefied and disappointed since they cannot grasp and make sense of it all. According to him due to
‘Mobius spiraling negativity’ the investigation for real entities and real causes remain impossible since:
The facts no longer have a specific trajectory, they are born at the intersection of models, a single fact can be engendered by all models at once. This anticipation, this precession, this short circuit, this confusion of the fact with its model…is what allows each time for all possible interpretations, even the most contradictory—all true, in the sense that their truth is to be exchanged, in the image of the model from which they derive, in a generalized cycle. (Simulacra and Simulation, 1994, p. 17)
Flourishing Creativity & Literacy
In the ‘hyperreal’ world that Baudrillard portrays the objects and the technologies are growing to be more sophisticated and intelligent progressively. This proliferation and complicatedness of objects which he calls the ‘ecstasy’ of objects, creates a catastrophe for the subjects, since the ‘ecstasy’ of the objects is accompanied by the ‘inertia’ of the subjects.
The smart, developed objects and technologies are growing and replicating uncontrollably to the extent that they are surpassing the boundaries and going beyond the ‘use-value’ and ‘exchange-value’. “The only revolution in things is today no longer in their dialectical transcendence, but in their potentialization, in their elevation to the nth power, whether that of terrorism, irony, or simulation. It is no longer dialectics, but ecstasy that is in process.” (Fatal Strategies, 2008, p. 63) The subject is encircled to the ‘ecstatic’ and ‘obscene’ excrescence of powerful objects and begins to slow down and become numb and motionless. Therefore, in his Fatal Strategies (1983) Baudrillard discusses that subjects begin to surrender to the rules and strategies of the objects and are stupefied by their complexities; in this regard his conception of the contemporary man is quite contrary to Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of evolution of man. Teilhard believes in the metaphysics of evolution. In his theory “the universe is constantly developing towards higher levels of material complexity and consciousness” (Tonelli, 2011, p. 97) and human beings are also in the process of converging toward a final unity, the ‘omega point’ which is the supreme complexity of consciousness. He asserts that beyond the tendencies of the material world toward production and sophistication human being is also becoming more complex and more completely unified. He believes human’s body is evolved sufficiently with a sophisticated nervous system to permit rational reflection and self awareness. The ‘omega point’ that Teilhard envisions for human beings is in sharp contrast with the way Baudrillard portrays subjects in the ‘hyperreal’ era. “As information starts to circulate everywhere at the very speed of light. There is no longer an absolute by which to measure the rest. But behind this acceleration something is beginning to slow down absolutely. Are we now slowing down absolutely?” (Fatal Strategies, 2008, pp.
37-38).Consequently, Baudrillard challenges the evolution of man and claims that human beings are not accompanying the complicatedness and ‘ecstasy’ of objects and technologies. Don Delillo accordingly presents Richard Elster in his novel who believes in the ‘omega point’ and aspires to reach it in the silence and solitude of the desert but in the course of the novel and via Elster’s fate, Delillo discloses his opposition with Teilhard’s theory.
3. Baudrillardian Reading of Point Omega
Point Omega centers on Richard Elster’s forlorn retirement in a desert in California. He is an emeritus intellectual who has worked in Pentagon for the last two years to provide them with “an intellectual framework for the Iraq war.”
(Kakutani, 2010) He has escaped the very expansion of the objects’ predominance and is taking refuge in the empty landscapes of the desert. “The sun was beaming down. This is what he wanted, to feel the deep heat beating into his body, feel the body itself, reclaim the body from what he called the nausea of News and Traffic.” (Dellilo, 2012, p. 22) Elster distances himself from the ‘hyperreal’ ecstatic ‘simulations’ since he doesn’t want to surrender to the object’s rules and be stupefied by their complexities. As Baudrillard names Elster is in the state of ‘inertia’ and in the desert he is remote from the development and speed of objects and technologies: “Time slows down when I’m here. Time becomes blind…I don’t get old here.” (p. 30) Elster asserts that he is in the desert to “eat, sleep and sweat, here to do nothing, sit and think”. (p. 22) He has withdrawn to desert to stop being exposed to “News and Traffic. Sports and Weather” (p. 23) remote from the claustrophobic scenes of the city. Now he is in an underfurnished house in the desert and observes “nothing but distances, not vistas or sweeping sightlines but only distances.” (p. 22)
Elster states that he used to come to this house before as well “to write, to think” (p. 29) but this time in what he calls his “spiritual retreat” (p. 29) he determines to solely reclaim his body and mind since he is ‘inert’ and is escaping the
‘ecstasy’ which has made him ‘inert’. As Michiko Kakutani puts: “All three central characters in this novel…are alienated, oddly detached people. They are individuals dwelling in a limbo state, searching for something that might give order or meaning to their lives or simply shell-shocked by the randomness and menace of modern life.” (Kakutani, 2010)Elster escapes to desert to stop being exposed to the flood of information. Jim, the documentary filmmaker who accompanies Elster and aims to make a documentary film starring him, also is impressed by the absence of information and media messages and decides to cease his exposure to them “I went inside to check my laptop for e-mail, needing outside contact but feeling corrupt, as if I were breaking an unstated pact of creative withdrawal.” (p. 31) Jim says: “I wasn’t using my cell phone and almost never touched my laptop. They began to seem feeble, whatever their speed and reach, devices overwhelmed by landscape.” (p. 82)
Teilhard de Chardin states that human’s consciousness is reaching the ‘omega point’ similarly Elster comments:
“human thought is alive, it circulates. And the sphere of collective human thought, this is approaching the final term, the last flare.” (p. 65) Teilhard’s notion of ‘omega point’ is in contrast with Baudrillard’s worldview according to which against the development and sophistication of the technology and the objects, human being is beginning to slow down and feel stupefied. The object’s world is accelerating toward its point of ‘ecstasy’ flourishing to a level which is beyond the perception of human being and people cannot reckon the complicatedness of objects and technology. Teilhard aspires an ‘omega point’ toward which human is pacing but according to Baudrillard the ‘ecstasy’ of objects and technology does not carry human being with itself too and humans have to conform to the rules and strategies of the objects and consequently they become ‘inert’. While Teilhard envisions an ‘omega point’ of supreme consciousness and intelligence toward which humans are approaching Baudrillard portrays human being entrapped by the sophistication of their world and being stricken in the state of ‘inertia’. While Teilhard believes in metaphysics of evolution of man to the final convergence with the supernatural order Elster ponders about human extinction in the desert, human is going to be extinct the way other species became extinct. He watches the landscapes in the desert and reflects about the species being extinct million years ago. Spreicer suggests “Point Omega portrays the exhaustion of the complex system of American-style visuality and connects it to the space of the desert, where the retardation of time functions as an