الفهرس 
he Rise of the Concept of Fragmentation in PostmodernismOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This thesis applies a postmodern perspective to Barthelme’s Paradise (1986) and Snow White (1967). This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter explores the background of the postmodern period after World War II and how this period had a great impact on shaping the postmodern movement. It investigates postmodernists’ attempts to make sense of their fragmentary and sometimes bizarre experiences, as well as attempts to make sense of the senseless world in which they lived, beginning with meaningless language, identity loss, and the deterioration of all traditional life concepts. It highlights how Postmodernism revolts against every Modernist concept that speaks of reason and scientific progress, which control all aspects of life. Not only that, but it demonstrates how Postmodernism completely rejects the Modernist industrial mentality that resulted from revolutionary advances in scientific disciplines such as chemistry and physics, as well as how it rebels against Modernist rationalism and objectivism. Thus, the chapter reflects how Postmodernism is a representation of the unfinalized subjectivism and continuous inquiry into self-definition that possessed every postmodernist at that time, as they were continuously inquiring and questioning who they were socially, culturally, or even racially.
As a result, postmodernism adopts fragmentation as an iconic tool to best express its dilemmas and characteristics through the noticeable changes happening as the outcome of such a fragmented society. The thing that makes this searching quest carried by writers such as Barthelme to create a postmodern identity for the people of his age. Consequently, the chapter emphasizes how Barthelme was a pioneer in using fragmentation as a technique in his novels and short stories, and it also introduces the reader to his philosophy and views through a thorough examination of his works and literary achievements.
The second chapter represents the success of Barthelme in adopting the concept of fragmentation in shaping his texts, especially Paradise and Snow White, which are deeply analyzed throughout the thesis. It reflects the fact that Barthelme wants the reader to be in the same position as the characters he creates in the texts, trying to find meaning in the midst of a plethora of possible interpretations without reaching a finalized, specific, or cohesive understanding. In the same way that he, like Bakhtin, rejects any self-contained text, he also rejects any fixed meaning, philosophical systems of thought, or psychoanalytic notions of the subject. For him, fragmentation is the only form of writing that he trusts and employs in creating his texts. Thus, the chapter highlights how the texts are full of a series of brilliant but unrelated narrative fragments and how Barthelme follows the same approach in shaping the themes, characters, and thematic approach of his novels. In Paradise and Snow White, for instance, he allows the reader to understand and get to know more about the themes that are common in the after-war postmodern era, such as the fragmentation of the romantic attraction theme in both novels, the theme of materialism and its negative impact on the feelings of people and their interpersonal reactions since they became like machines, and the new representation of the feminist theme in the two texts.
Moving to the thematic approach he follows in the two novels; Barthelme uses philosophical and psychological allusions from various forms of art. In other words, Paradise takes the reader’s mind back to Adam and Eve’s paradise, and Snow White automatically directs the reader’s attention to the old fairy tale of the Grimm brothers. His approach is distinguished by a senselessness based on absurd situations and the fragmentation of theme, character, and language throughout the text. By doing so, Barthelme was able to bridge the gap between the worlds of fantasy and what the reader refers to as reality.
The third chapter introduces a detailed analysis of the techniques used by Barthelme in shaping the two texts, from subtle fragmented dialogues to the usage of deconstruction as an analysis tool. Barthelme’s work frequently employs non-linear, fragmented narrative structures such as omniscient narration, interior monologues, and dialogues that absolutely depend on the choice of the author to bring together each of the story’s events and elements and then reveal them to the reader. He also employs collage techniques to emphasize the uniqueness of the work and to draw parallels between the fantasy and real worlds. He adopted it because he believes that this technique is the best representation of a brain-damaged society which cannot get things together any tighter. As a result, collage is a cornerstone postmodernist technique in Paradise, as the novel consists of very brief chapters and short scenes. This technique is so refined that the reader notices the novel’s random and discontinuous intertwining of human relations. Set among the everyday events of Simon’s paradise are chapters in the form of question-and-answer dialogues that go between the now and then in the form of thought flights of his paradise and how closely Simon’s life interpreted it. As for Snow White, Barthelme employs collage to introduce a series of events that occur in the lives of its various characters simply because the novel is made up of 107 fragments of short clauses and empty questionnaires that the readers must fill in. The gaps between them are frequently overlooked in the initial storyline, allowing the reader to form comparisons and contrasts with the old fairy tale.
Furthermore, this chapter discusses Barthelme’s sincerity in embracing deconstruction as an analytical angle with its ambivalent technique, which on the one hand appears to criticize postmodern society while relishing it on the other. For him, deconstruction is a rejection of modernism’s legacy, as modernism’s search for truth contradicts Barthelme’s postmodernist approval of meaning’s unfinalizability. The fiction of Barthelme can be assessed in the sense of the open-ended text. They provide guidance on how to interpret them based on the reader’s personal understanding.