복잡계 이론을 통한 드릴로 소설 읽기: 『코스모폴리스』를 중심으로

Abstract

We live in a very small world, in which all is closely connected by cell phones, Facebooks, or the Internet. In this small and complicated world, the purpose of contemporary science is to find simplicity and order among the complex. Everything looks very random and disorderly in this world, but everything is absolutely and systematically connected to everything else. When we study closely to see how everything is structured and connected, the total is not the sum of the parts. When the total makes a different result from the sum of the parts, scientists call the result as ‘emergence’. The purpose of this paper is to study this very recent scientific theory, which is called the ‘complex theory’, and to read one of DeLillo’s novels, Cosmopolis, applying this theory. DeLillo accepts that we should now live in a world which makes each person become a fragment of the whole system. However, he wants to point out that in this complex world, the human is one of the most important components, as well as nature. Contemporary society focuses on the ‘emergence’ from the whole of the parts, not each fragment. The value of a human has been gradually forgotten in this technical society, so DeLillo declares that this forgotten being can become the most important cause of a big effect in the future.