REPRESENTATIONS OF DEATH IN DON DELILLO’S WHITE NOISE AND COSMOPOLIS Nicolae-Andrei POPA University of Bucharest Abstract: The present paper analyzes the concept of fear of death in Don DeLillo's novels White Noise and Cosmopolis, emphasizing the representations of this feeling in relation to television and economic life, respectively. While the Gladney family subconsciously attempted to escape the linear progression of time towards death by gathering in front of the TV set every Friday night, Eric Parker sought to overcome the fear of death by means of the accumulation of material possessions, as well as prestige. DeLillo’s novel White Noise is a novel caught up in the web spun by the global economic features of late postmodernism, while underlining the effects of mass media on the everyday lives of American characters living in the fictional town of Blacksmith. Cosmopolis, published in 2003, was written after the tragic events of 9/11. However, it is not the story of a national catastrophy, but of a personal tragedy, the death of a 28 year old millionaire called Eric Parker. If in White Noise one infers the centrality of television to the American characters' lives, in Cosmopolis, the reader is provided with an economic outlook on the world. The consequence of the economic phenomenon on literary aesthetics is that globalized economy dominates aesthetic production. Materially wealthy, but spiritually vacuous, Eric Parker exemplifies modern decadence, whose finality is death itself. Keywords: fear, death, material possesion, decadence postmodernism The present paper analyzes the concept of fear of death in Don DeLillo's novels White Noise and Cosmopolis, emphasizing the representations of this feeling in relation to television and economic life, respectively. While the Gladney family subconsciously attempted to escape the linear progression of time towards death by gathering in front of the TV set every Friday night, Eric Parker sought to overcome the fear