The play leaves us with an uneasy sense that the insane manipulate reality better than the sane. Another reason for DeLillo's success as a playwright lies in his ability to structure urgent, postmodern themes into compelling action and conflict. In Valparaiso , he focuses on how we define, construct, and maintain personal identity in a media-saturated culture. DeLillo's stories demonstrate the insidious power that the media have to infiltrate our personal lives while also revealing our complicity. We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one.
Every photograph reinforces the aura . . .
We've agreed to be party of a collective perception. . . . The identity of the barn undergoes a transformation when presented as a media image. The media not only manipulate our images but slowly undermine our ability to accept these images on any other terms. As a result, the reality behind the images destabilizes. DeLillo's stories take the problem one step further and question how we can possibly define individual identity in a world losing its grasp on reality.