American Culture and Code: Technology, Reinforcement, and Collective Perception in Don DeLillo’s White Noise
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document in English
social sciences
school essay
published 21/08/2007
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SummaryDeLillo’s White Noise is largely a critique of American culture after World War II and after the popularity of home television in the 1950s. In White Noise, white noise itself has covered up a gaping hole in American culture. The hole is the obtrusive, persistent, and arguably natural “fear of death,” and leading up to the mid-’80s, DeLillo’s post-War white noise has become a distraction from mass death for the mass of Americans.
Table of Contents
- There is a constant struggle in the narrative (and DeLillo suggests in American culture as well) between 'American magic and dread?
- Jack and his family confuse the idea of death with actual, personal death
- The fear of death syndrome is also linked to the prominent theme of consumerism in White Noise, and in DeLillo's American society microcosm
- As suggested above, this type of consumerism has assumed a spiritual significance in the narrative, and as DeLillo implies, in American culture overall
- At the end of White Noise DeLillo ultimately criticizes the American mass media culture as a culture of addicts
- This passage, like much of White Noise, as well as television and media in general, is highly coded
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