White Noise
Death is probably the most feared word in the English language. Its undesired uncertainty threatens society’s desire to believe that life never ends. Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise tells the bizarre story of how Jack Gladney and his family illustrate the postmodern ideas of religion, death, and popular culture. The theme of death’s influence over the character mentality, consumer lifestyle, and media manipulation is used often throughout DeLillo’s story.
Perhaps, the character most responsive to death is Jack Gladney. In fact, he is so consumed by his fear of death that his ordinary thought processes are often interrupted by the question: “Who will die first” (DeLillo 15)? In Jack’s mind: “This question comes up from time to time, like where are the car keys” (DeLillo 15). Jack finds the aura of death to be very noticeable and real, and he relies on his consumer lifestyle as an escape from his fear of death.
Jack uses the supermarket as his base for his consumer lifestyle and a place to escape, which is validated by the interpretation of his friend and colleague Murray Siskind. Murray views the supermarket as almost a holy place, an atmosphere with rays and “white noise” everywhere. It’s full of psychic data….Everything is concealed in symbolism, hidden by veils of mystery and layers of cultural material…The large doors
slide open, they close unbidden….All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of
the spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering, rearranging, peeling off the layers of unspeakability…. We don’t have to cling to life artificially, or to death for that matter. We simply walk toward the sliding doors. Waves and radiation. Look how well-lighted the place is. The place is sealed off, self-contained…. It is timeless…. Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think (DeLillo 37-38).
John N. Duvall, author of “The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo’s White Noise,” believes that “Murray’s interpretations become Jack’s convictions; Murray’s speculations, Jack’s experiences” (143). Drawing on Murray’s speculation‘s, Jack embraces Murray’s analysis as a truth and uses the supermarket as security, a place where colors and names always in the same place, a place where ...
... middle of paper ...
... profoundly important questions about death, the afterlife, God, worlds and space, yet they exist in an almost Pop Art atmosphere(268).
By treating these false tracts of literature as some sort of god, consumers can escape the reality of death since the content is not in day to day, ordinary life. Death is a fear that has attacked the minds of man since the beginning. For years people have treated death as a unspeakable occurrence, and White Noise shows those desperate attempts through postmodern imagery. According to Don DeLillo, death is an assailant that creeps its way into the subconscious of society but is prevented from tainting the gratification of life by way of the postmodern army- technology.
Works Cited
Conroy, Mark. “From Tombstone to Tabloid: Authority Figured in White Noise.”
Critique 35.2 (1994): 97-110.
DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin Books 1999.
Duvall, John N. “The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated
Mediation in DeLillo’s White Noise.” Arizona Quarterly 50.3 (1994):
127-153.
Maltby, Paul. “The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo.” Contemporary
Literature 37.2 (1996): 258-277.
Postrel develops her support of national retailers throughout the essay, offering the opinion that it isn’t the stores that give places their character, but instead, aspects like the terrain, weather and culture that do (Postrel 347). While terrain, weather and culture can set apart regions, such as New England from The Deep South, and Southern California from the Midwest, it’s the community that gives each town their own special character. A community consists of the residents, their restaurants, hardware stores, pharmacies, ice cream parlors, farmers markets, and so on. These places, and the interactions that occur daily at each establishment, are the fabric that differentiate them, and create the breeding ground for diverse characteristics to flourish. While Postrel argues that wildly different business establishments across America in the past is a myth , it’s actually not necessarily that the products that varied from store to store, but more the aforementioned factors that truly set ...
Sammy is the cashier at the store, he has been for quite some time now, long enough where he has a memorized “the punches, 4, 9, GROC, TOT” ( 602 ) and has created a song for himself “"Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py pee-pul (splat)"” ( 602 ). Showing his contempt for conformity and consumerism to the everyday life of the store Sammy joins the shoppers or as he calls them the “sheep” ( 600 ) of the store who can never be out of the spell of their daily routines. The location and the layout of the store is also tediously described by Sammy when he is describing the surroundings to the readers where he is located “between the checkouts and the Special bins” ( 599 ). He also does this when he describes the girls going up and down the isles of items “the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft-drinks-crackers-and-cookies aisle” ( 600 ). With all of these tedious descriptions of details of Sammy’s surrounding we slowly start to see him getting more and more frustrated and appalled at the conformity of the society that he lives in, and the difficulty of breaking the social formalities that he must deal with on a daily basis.
There are many short stories in literature that share a common theme presented in different ways. A theme that always keeps readers’ attention is that of death because it is something that no one wants to face in real life, but something that can be easily faced when reading. “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both exemplify how two authors use a common theme of death to stand as a metaphor for dystopian societies.
This short story, first published in 1961, stirs up controversy and still continues to be debated today. Although Updike intends for his writing to be simple and enjoyable, he also includes literary and cultural knowledge of the time period for readers to analyze more deeply (Saldivar N. pag.). As with A&P, Updike injects religious faith, which few Non-Catholic writers attempted during this time, in a seemingly effortless way. The supermarket A&P, the main setting of the story, was positioned “right in the middle of town” (Updike 983); a prime position accessible to all, although, generally this position was reserved for the town’s place of worship. In a way, Updike implanted this detail to be ironic. The supermarket in his story represented a “temple of modern consumerism” and was replacing a temple of worship (Wells N. pag.). To create a story that was relevant to the 1960’s, yet still encompasses issues society currently faces, demonstrates Updike’s genius ability to engage in the enthralling world around him.
Death has feelings as much as any human, imagining, getting bored, distracted, and especially wondering (350, 243, 1, 375 respectively). Odd, one could say for an eternal metaphysical being. But then again, not that queer once having considered how Death spends his time. He is there at the dying of every light, that moment that the soul departs its physical shell, and sees the beauty or horror of that moment. Where to a human witnessing a death first hand (even on a much more detached level than our narrator) can easily be a life changing event, Death is forced to witness these passings for nearly every moment of his eternal life. Emotional overload or philosophical catalyst? Death gains his unique perspective on life through his many experiences with the slowly closing eyelids and muttered last words. Yet in this...
According to Raymond Williams, “In a class society, all beliefs are founded on class position, and the systems of belief of all classes …” (Rice and Waugh 122). His work titled, Marxism and Literature expounded on the conflict between social classes to bridge the political ideals of Marxism with the implicit comments rendered through the text of a novel. “For the practical links,” he states “between ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’ and the ‘production of real life’ are all in this material social process of signification itself” (133). Williams asserts that a Marxist approach to literature introduces a cross-cultural universality, ensuingly adding a timeless value to text by connecting creative and artistic processes with the material products that result. Like Williams, Don DeLillo calls attention to the economic and material relations behind universal abstractions such as aesthetics, love, and death. DeLillo’s White Noise brings modern-day capitalist societies’ incessant lifestyle disparity between active consumerists and those without the means to the forefront of the story’s plot. DeLillo’s setting uses a life altering man-made disaster in the suburban small-town of Blacksmith to shed light on the class conflict between the middle class (bourgeoisie) and the working poor (proletariat). After a tank car is punctured, an ominous cloud begins to loom over Jack Gladney and his family. No longer a feathery plume or a black billowing cloud, but the airborne toxic event—an event that even after its conclusion Jack cannot escape the prophecy of his encroaching death. Through a Marxist reading of the characterization of Jack Gladney, a middle-aged suburban college professor, it is clear that the overarching obsession with death operates as an...
Death is, perhaps, the most universal of themes that an author can choose to write of. Death comes to all things; not so love, betrayal, happiness, or suffering. Each death is certain, but each is also unique. In Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote addresses several deaths, and each is handled in its individual fashion. From the manner of the death to its effect on those it touches, Capote crafts vignettes within the story to give the reader a very different sense of each one.
The ethnographic study took place at McDonalds’ shop, Leeds, local market in the afternoon of Monday, 17th January 2011. From away I could observe the huge logo of McDonalds. I stood at the entrance and stared at the shop for few seconds. The shop was far more elegant than the average McDonald’s. The interior has a minimal style with posh chairs, tables, black art deco fixtures, beautiful paintings and attractive lights and draperies. There were large windows so it was impossible for customers to see into the Harvey Nichols store. Also, outside were window boxed filled with flowers or greenery. I could hear some relaxing music. At first glance, I noticed that customers were people with different age groups, genders, ethnic classes, social classes and cultural backgrounds. The language which was more spoken was English. [Without thinking, I was moving towards the counter, I faced] the girl behind the counter [; she] was wearing a red t-shirt with a cap and a hut. She seemed to be in a rush to handle the orders. Despite that, she was friendly and with a smile on the face to welcome the customers. The most co...
By coding his novel, White Noise, as if it were a television show, DeLillo comments on the state of affairs in our modern culture. DeLillo demonstrates our society's codependency on what was originally only intended to be a medium of communication. By showing the benevolence of the medium as it translates into the lives of his characters, DeLillo is saying that maybe our dependence on television, even as blood bath entertainment is not as bad as generally perceived.
Pahl, Jon. (2003). The Mall as Sacred Space. In Behrens Laurence & Rosen Leonard (Eds.),
...’s bleak words to Jack represent the human condition he face. In the postmodern American Dream, consumerism serves as “white noise” to forget our death.
Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both parallel and opposing views on death.
In the play “everyman” death is depicted as something that is terribly feared as no one seemed ready for it, death is perceived as something that takes one away from the pleasures of this world.
In Don Delilo’s, White Noise different themes are displayed throughout the novel. Some themes are the fear of death, loss of identity, technology as the enemy, and American consumerism. The society represented in the novel views people as objects and emotionally detached from many things. Death is always in the air and trapped in peoples mind. The culture that’s represented in the novel adds to the loss of individualism, but also adds to the figurative death of the characters introduced in the novel.
One thing that we often hear is that “death is just a part of life.” So often in our day and age do we hear people utter these words. However, death is far more significant and impactful than some would allege. True death is not merely a time when we cease to exist; it is an entombment, a mindset in which we are dead to this world. Throughout our lives, it is true that we can all be dead in one way or another, but it does not have to be that way. When we have our eyes opened to what death actually is, it is far easier to grasp what the true meaning of life is, and to embrace it. Often, we will come across individuals who are enveloped in death and others who are immersed in true life. The shadow of death and entombment lies upon some, encompassing