Hyperreality in Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound

Abstract

Reality has been one of man's major concerns in different ages. Finding the actual reality becomes more intense in the postmodern era due to the fact that most of realities are only considered as ''social constructs'' and they are subject to change (Tiedemann 62). Besides, as Hicks states, there is no ''absolute truth'' in this era (18). In other words, postmodernism lacks the ability to provide exact and meaningful statements about an "independently existing reality'' and replaces only a ''social-linguistic, constructionist account of reality'' (Hicks 6). Therefore, as Hoover holds, it renders ''plurality'' and multiplicity instead of individualism (xxvii). Post-structuralism which ''parallels'' with postmodernism (Abrams 169), presents this plurality, Sarup mentions, by referring to the ''floating signifier system'' (3), in which the signifiers and the signifieds are not "fixed" entities, and each "signifier" may refer to several signifieds (Roman 309).