TRACES OF EXISTENTIALISM IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE

ACTIVE RESEARCHER SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL activeresearcher.com December, 2025 volume 2 issue 13 54 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18020808 TRACES OF EXISTENTIALISM IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE Ro‘ziqulov Normurod Po‘latboy o‘g‘li Student, Chirchik State Pedagogical University [email protected] Scientific adviser: Diana Komilovna Ruzmetova Act.assoc.prof., Doctor of Philosophy in Pedagogical Science (PhD), Chirchik State Pedagogical University d.ruzmeto[email protected] ABSTRACT This paper examines the persistence and transformation of existentialist themes in contemporary American literature. While classical existentialism emerged from the philosophical traditions of mid-twentieth-century Europe, its core concerns—freedom, absurdity, alienation, and the search for authenticity—continue to shape American fiction today. Through close readings of selected works by Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, and Ottessa Moshfegh, the study demonstrates how existential motifs have been reconfigured to address new social realities, including technological alienation, the fragmentation of identity, and the dissolution of stable narratives in a post-truth society. The findings suggest that existentialism remains a vital interpretive framework, evolving to illuminate the anxieties of twenty-first-century American life. Keywords: existentialism, American literature, authenticity, alienation, narrative fragmentation ACTIVE RESEARCHER SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL activeresearcher.com December, 2025 volume 2 issue 13 55 INTRODUCTION Existentialism, as articulated by thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, emphasized the individual’s confrontation with absurdity and the necessity of self-fashioned meaning. Although the philosophical movement reached its zenith in post-war Europe, its influence quickly extended across the Atlantic, shaping generations of American writers. In the contemporary period, existentialist concerns have not diminished; instead, they have taken on new forms that reflect shifting cultural and technological conditions. This paper investigates how existentialism endures in contemporary American literature, focusing on the ways writers reinterpret classical existential themes to address twenty-first-century anxieties. The goal is to identify specific narrative strategies and thematic patterns that demonstrate the ongoing relevance of existentialist thought. METHODS This study employs a qualitative, interpretive approach grounded in close textual analysis. Three authors were selected based on their critical reception and the thematic presence of existential motifs in their works: Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, and Ottessa Moshfegh. Representative novels—DeLillo‘s Point Omega, Auster’s City of Glass, and Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation—were analyzed. The analysis concentrated on identifying classical existentialist themes— freedom, absurdity, alienation, authenticity—and examining how they manifest in each narrative. Secondary criticism on existentialism and American literature provided additional conceptual grounding. RESULTS 1. Alienation and the Technological World in Don DeLillo‘s Point Omega DeLillo‘s fiction often explores the relationship between human consciousness and large systems—media, politics, technology. In Point Omega, characters confront an increasingly mediated reality in which personal experience loses its immediacy. This reflects an updated form of existential alienation: not merely estrangement from ACTIVE RESEARCHER SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL activeresearcher.com December, 2025 volume 2 issue 13 56 society but from one’s own perception. The slowing down of time, the fragmentation of experience, and the characters’ struggle for authenticity echo Sartrean concerns about bad faith and self-deception. 2. Identity Dissolution in Paul Auster’s City of Glass Auster’s postmodern detective novel destabilizes identity to the point of disintegration. The protagonist, Daniel Quinn, embodies the existential theme of the self in crisis. As Quinn assumes different identities, the narrative exposes the fragility of selfhood and the futility of seeking a stable essence. This recalls the existentialist rejection of essentialism while incorporating contemporary anxieties about authorship, surveillance, and the opacity of meaning. 3.Absurdity and Withdrawal in Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation Moshfegh’s protagonist attempts to solve her existential despair by sleeping for a year. Her project is absurd in the Camusian sense—an act that rejects social norms while acknowledging their emptiness. Rather than confronting the world, she withdraws from it, revealing a modern twist on the existential struggle. In a culture saturated with productivity rhetoric and emotional self-regulation, her retreat becomes a critique of contemporary pressures that intensify feelings of meaninglessness. DISCUSSION The analysis shows that existentialism remains a productive lens through which to understand contemporary American fiction, even as the conditions producing existential anxiety have evolved. While mid-century existentialists focused on war, oppression, and metaphysical absurdity, today’s writers grapple with digital fragmentation, unstable identities, and emotional exhaustion. DeLillo revisits existential alienation by situating it within a technologically mediated landscape. Auster amplifies the crisis of identity through postmodern narrative experimentation. Moshfegh reimagines absurdity and detachment in a culture defined by self-optimization. Despite these differences, all three authors foreground ACTIVE RESEARCHER SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL activeresearcher.com December, 2025 volume 2 issue 13 57 characters who confront the tension between autonomy and constraint, searching for meaning in a world that resists coherence. Furthermore, the persistence of existential themes indicates that the movement’s philosophical legacy continues to shape American literary consciousness. Rather than fading, existentialism adapts, offering tools to explore contemporary forms of uncertainty. CONCLUSION This study demonstrates that traces of existentialism are clearly discernible in contemporary American literature. Through their explorations of alienation, identity, and absurdity, DeLillo, Auster, and Moshfegh rework classical existential concerns to reflect the anxieties of the digital age. Their novels illustrate that existentialism survives not as a fixed philosophical system but as a dynamic mode of inquiry capable of interpreting modern experience. Future research might compare contemporary American narratives with global literary responses to similar existential pressures or examine how existentialism informs genre literature, including science fiction and autofiction. REFERENCES 1. Auster, Paul. City of Glass. Penguin Books, 1985 2. Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O‘Brien, Vintage International, 1991. 3. De Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Citadel Press, 1976. 4. DeLillo, Don. Point Omega. Scribner, 2010. 5. Moshfegh, Ottessa. My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Penguin Press, 2018. 6. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes, Washington Square Press, 1992.