Language and Donald Barthelme’s Snow White

Abstract

The current study assessed Donald Barthelme’s Snow White which shares a new version of our language world. This postmodern novel illustrates different plays of language, in that different problems get originated. The first problem is the heap of words which change their sanctity to a second handed commodity. Words which are once the base of every fiction’s coherence are now just at the center to fill up but not to fulfill anything. Then self and personality lack and at last the endlessness and the circularity of any structure which is built by language. The essay, through its invented world of nothing/everything, tries to open a new outlook toward language which was hidden in a labyrinth of its own plays. In the meantime, it reaches to a point that its language decenters everything. Although different critics have investigated language in many respects through this novel, the essay utilizes a new perspective toward the problems originated from language plays to generate a modern world called “world of nothing”. On the other hand, the main purpose is not to search the philosophical aspects and explanations of Barthelme’s Snow White, but discussing the role of language through a literary text. In conclusion, the study will show how deconstruction reading strategy is deconstructed for it uses the same medium as language. Finally, it asks how a literary text and its reading strategy can be against themselves and stand at the threshold of new meanings and interpretations.

Keywords: Différance, Undecidability, Iterability, World of Nothing