White Noise Stereotypes

Don Delillo’s White Noise covers many post modern subjects such as consumerism, death, and even religion, but through many of these subjects it is somewhat difficult trying to decipher the “white noise” Delillo is referring to in the title of the novel. Karen Weekes of LIT stated: “This title emphasizes our culture’s saturation in sound, but encompasses other definitions as well, some of which focus on the physical properties of sound waves or the random nature of noise” (287). One of the connections, many may make to the to the White Noise title is the use of technology in throughout the book such as television and radio. Delillo makes it apparent that technology is becoming a major foundation to families and the identities of each individual.

An example for this definition would be some police officers killing black men for little to no purpose and citizens riot because of it such as the Baltimore riots. While one will believe the actions of the police officers would change after riots, they most likely will continue. Part of the issue with some of the white noise is the media. The media only depicted the hostile results of major issue in an environment. One theme that is apparent in white noise is the role of television in society’s, particularly media outlets. Delillo justifies that humans are beginning to believe every word the media says as if it were gospel and Heinrich Gladney is the perfect example of that. Heinrich and Jack briefly talked about the weather outside: “‘Its going to rain tonight.’ ‘Its raining now’ I (Jack) said. ‘The Radio said tonight’” (22). Instead of using his own common sense and looking outside Heinrich takes the word of the news instead. Another example with Heinrich was during the Airborne Toxic Event. During part two of the novel, families were asked to evacuate their homes because of the train chemical spill but Heinrich did not believe it happened because he remembered the news only displaying panic situations such as this in poor low income places. The point of these two instances is

Maury believes that one should look for some type of belief or “white noise” to distract themselves from the thoughts of death. Maury’s “religion” seems to be exemplified in his consumption but, Jack does not have one and constantly thinks of death, which prompts Maury to tell Jack to sample each religion and “Pick one that you [he] likes” as if he’s at the market (287). These ideas of a distraction from death is justified throughout the novel and shows Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death influence on Don Delillo while writing White Noise. Becker in the preface of The Denial of Death states: “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else: it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man” (ix). Delillo carries this theme throughout the book through Babette, Jack, Maury and even Willie Mink. While Maury was trying to convince Jack to pick up a religion, Babette had already found her cure for deadly thoughts. Babette turned to drugs, Dylar, to try to suppress the thoughts of death; and in relation to the economic definition of white noise, drugs do not take away pain permanently but temporarily causing one to take them often. The characters around Jack seemed to have found their white noise for death but he was still