Risk Theory and the Contemporary American Novel.

WHITE Noise (Book : DeLillo); ROAD, The (Book : McCarthy)

The article presents the author's discussion on the risk theory and how it is associated with the contemporary American culture. She expresses insistence that the potential for human control and the inevitability of human powerlessness are foregrounded by catastrophic risks, which she relates to nuclear war, environmental disaster, terrorist attack, susceptibility to accident and terminal illness and economic collapse. In addition, she examines such novels as "White Noise," "Gains," and "The Road," which he believes are exposing the cultural urges that underlie human's culture-wide preoccupation with risk.