Don DeLillo’s postmodern novel White Noise

Loan Huynh
Professor Jayne
ENGL 205-32471
5 August 2020.
8.4 ESSAY #4 FINAL DRAFT
In Don DeLillo’s postmodern novel White Noise, the author highlights how the main characters are anxious because of the fear of death, and they are involved in shopping activities as one way to cope with their fear of mortality. Technology is everywhere in the society, but rather than being beneficial, it also brings negative impacts such as making the people be irrational like and damages to the environment. The people rely on technology for communication and the television informs their views, but they are not knowledgeable and are ignorant of different risk factors in the society that are associated with high risk of death. Many of the scenes are set in the supermarket, a symbol of mass consumerism, and the inauthentic lives of the people. DeLillo warns against mass consumerism and the intrusion of electronic media in the domestic lives of Americans. The novel warns against the mass consumerism, relying too much on television and technology, and the fear of death are the main themes in the novel and they are explored to highlight the relationship between these themes.
Mass consumption is close inked to the people’s shopping habits where they tend to meet at the supermarkets and advertising encourages them to shop more. Supermarket scenes are central to understanding DeLillo’s skepticism of mass consumerism as the characters spend a considerable amount of time there. To Murray (22), being at the supermarket recharges the people spiritually and it is as though there is psychic data. Shopping is s akin to rituals and ceremonies where people shop until they are dead as the people attach too much importance to shopping. Anything that disrupts the people’s shopping habits and experiences at the supermarket makes them uneasy as the have grown accustomed to shopping (Weekes 299 -300). Even though, there is attachment to shopping, the people do not necessarily derive satisfaction and the more they shop, the more they want to get money and shop more.
The characters live fulfilled lives and thy engage in activities that will distract them, but mass consumerism and overreliance on technology fails to fill the void in their lives. In DeLillo’s society, the people form their identity based on their shopping habits and activities, and religion, which once played an important role in people’s lives is almost irrelevant (Weekes 294). The people are used to watching television and this further influences their attitudes, beliefs and habits In the mass consumer culture, knowledge is a commodity and the market supersedes different spheres of life including religion, but conspicuous shopping and consumption creates antipathy unlike religion (Packer 661 -662). In the techno-consumer culture, everything is commercialized where the media and technology are co-opted into selling such that consumerism is deeply embedded into people’s daily life, but there is lack of consumer fulfillment and satisfaction.
The theme of conspicuous consumption and mass consumer reflects change in the American society where shopping is no longer associated with female shoppers, but everyone. Robinson (2) argues that critics of DeLillo’s have a gendered view as they treat shopping as a feminine trait. Jack longs to shop and when he gets money he seeks to buy even more and visit the supermarket. Literary critics of the novel who view shopping as a threat to masculinity mostly focus on the role and place of the heterosexual white American in a rapidly changing society. Mass consumerism is closely linked to postmodernism, but there are many factors affecting traditional masculinity in the US. Mass consumerism is societal and as such does not threaten masculinity and it also does not imply that American is feminized and that the men have lost their traditional authority.
In the small-town setting of Blacksmith in Middle America, electronic media pollutes the domestic life and the people are into mass consumerism. Despite, Jack and his family, living and spending most of his time at the University City, Jack lacks critical thinking skills and is reliant on the television to inform him without questioning whether there is biasness. Life at the College-on-the-Hill University is trivialized, and it is Jack and his wife’s children who are inquisitive unlike the Gladney’s who resist knowledge and express irrational fear. The society is fashioned around technologies where there is mass consumerism and the constant presence of mass media.
The book begins with focus on Jack Gladney the founder, head and professor of Hitler Studies, but for him Hitler is just another subject academic discourse, while the intellectual adventures mostly occurs at Jack’s home rather than the university. Hitler had authority and power, and Jack also wanted this, and he named his son Heinrich (DeLillo 20). In his classes, Jack argued that among the Nazis, crowds were important as they shielded people from death. Despit...