A Baudrillardian Dystopia in John Cheever's Selected Short Stories

The purpose of the present research is to analyze John Cheever¿s twelve selected short stories in the light of Jean Baudrillard¿s ideas about the American Dream as well as simulation and representation in the postmodernist era to study the effects of multimedia propaganda on the American Dream, reflected in literature as a sub-genre of multimedia. John Cheever, the founder of American Suburban Fiction, mostly focuses on the immigrants who move from metropolises like New York to the suburbs to pursue the American Dream.The diaspora happens under the government¿s policy to introduce suburbs as the simulacrum of paradise, where the American Dream can come true. The multimedia tries to reinforce this image through propaganda but as Baudrillard believes, multimedia images have no referents in the external world, thus the complete identification would be impossible. The suburbanites, squeezed between the multimedia-imposed images and the suppressing reality, try to find a way out to regain the lost individuality and liberty, which usually lead to escapism, double identity, and parallel secret life.