Analysis of The novel White Noise by Don DeLillo (Book Review Sample)

Student’s name
Professor’s name
Name of the subject
Date
White Noise Analysis
Don DeLillo is a prominent writer of postmodernism, whose creative works touch upon the complex problems in social and spiritual life of present-day America. The author criticizes the bewildering, materialistic, and superficial culture of the late twentieth century and shows a man lost in a world of confusion, rage, madness, and the effects of modern consumerism. His characters fight in a world of de-centered meanings and cannot find the focal point, as things have fallen apart in this artificial reality.
The novel White Noise is a revolutionary work ahead of its time that introduces the problems of the whole society. The major themes of this book are a fear of death, extreme consumerism, and the universal passion for technology. Discovering them, DeLillo emphasizes the impact of mass-produced things on people’s life.
The author gives the thought-provoking and detailed analysis of the contemporary society – society of consumption. He demonstrates how shopping centers, supermarkets, advertising, tabloids, television are considerably related to present-day Americans on the example of one post-nuclear family.
Even our high-technology society is overloaded with information, but, in fact, people are disoriented. For instance, the family of the main hero is characterized as the "cradle of the world’s misinformation" with his numerous marriages, wives, and children (DeLillo 81).
The false values of the consumer society are represented by the author. The family of Jack Gladney occupies the time with regularly received useless information such as goods from the supermarket and mall, fast food, and television. Jack’s colleague, Murray Jay Siskind, regards television and shopping as new religious procedures. He is a media-obsessed figure, who is influenced by American popular culture. Scenes with lists of broadcast voices and brand names just underline the expansion of consumerism and television to all spheres of our life.
The protagonist, Jack Gladney, looks like as a person who does not have any moral values. He builds his career by studying Adolf Hitler and has become an expert on Hitler’s life only to become a well-known personality. A Hitler study is located in the Popular Culture Building instead of the History building, and this is a vital point to understand Jack’s work. He does not worry about the war theme and millions of people, whom Hitler ordered to kill, just concentrating on the trivia and celebrity. Jack is most interested in Hitler as sex idol and superstar of Germany, as his colleague, Murray, said: "He is now your Hitler, Gladney’s Hitler. It must be deeply satisfying for you. The college is internationally known as a result of Hitler studies. It has an identity, a sense of achievement. You’re evolved and entire system around this figure, a structure with countless substructures and interrelated fields of study, a history within history" (DeLillo 16).
Due to the chancellor’s advice, Jack begins to wear expensive clothes all the time in campus and represents himself professionally as J.A.K. Cladney to become more recognized person. However, it is quite possible that our collapsed consumerist society constrained him to act in such a manner. Jack’s surroundings are considered to be a stage for his leading role as a "Hitler scholar”. No longer supported by Hitler’s shadow and having lost the strong ties to family, community, religion, Jack worries about his morality: "I am the false character that follows the name around" (DeLillo 17).
The whole college town is full of consumerists, who prefer watching television to partaking in public activities. People are mad about cereal boxes, media figures, and trademarks. Walking to the supermarket resembles a visit to the church. Supermarkets take the leading position of "American magic and dread" (DeLillo 19), where consumers turn into masses. Therefore, these things are central for understanding of our contemporary world and its main beliefs, where God is substituted by an ATM, and individuality is relieved by mass media models; consumerism has replaced religion.
This replacement means that consumerism has become more significant than religious beliefs. The supermarket is a small version of the whole world. There is an enormous range of dissimilar products as well as diverse types of the identical product. The different price on the same product explains the different classes in society. Shopping centers and supermarkets serve as the channels for the spiritual desires of contemporary Americans, who seek "peace of mind in a profit oriented context" (DeLillo 87) in such temples. Thus, consumerism has turned into a religion of things, but it cannot give salvation or consolation for people.
A situation of Jack checking the balance in the automated teller machine elucidates all sides of consumerism: "I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval" (DeLillo 46).
The concept of "white" together with the meaning of "the noise" illustrates the concept of supermarkets. Consumption is revealed in the scene, where Jack feels first desire for shopping in a large shopping center. The connection with the real world is exposed by shopping malls, television shows, radio programs, tabloid stories, and other forms of media representation. Even the violence spread by media is shown as entertainment, watching which the audience truly likes (D’cruz 78).
The media affect people so that their individualities become dependent on the image of the products they buy. Jack understands it and feels that he has no real personality, because he should buy goods to wear conforming to the images: "I filled myself out, found new aspects of myself, located a person I forgotten existed… Our images appeared on mirrored columns, in glassware and chrome, on TV, monitors in security rooms" (DeLillo 84).
The writer has set up the sensation of death as useful and noticeable one, because consumer standard of living is a method to escape from the fear of death. Jack considers the supermarket to be the only holy place – "a place where things are said, sights are seen, distances reached which we in our ordinary toil can only regard with the mingled reverence and wonder we hold in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions”( DeLillo 78). Murray has defined the supermarket as a space with the feeling of safety "sealed off and self-contained…timeless" (DeLillo 38), where one can wait after death before new birth: "This place recharges us spiritually, it prepares us, it’s a gateway or pathway. Look how bright. It’s full of physic data…" (DeLillo 37). Perhaps, Murray’s lectures on consumer and television are inherently a perception of the modern reality.
After the search of stableness in life, the main hero faces the cloud of damaging substances, and the fear of death appears after it. Jack’s belongings are of little consolation to him, as he wants to solve the problem of emptiness. He is concerned about the shortness of his earthly existence, but engrosses with sickly desire the details of bloody disasters that are depicted by mass media. The irony consists in selecting a media image of death, not a religious one.
Jack’s wife, Babette, thinks that a person with the proper attitude to a situation can modify a damaging circumstance by breaking it up into parts. Such worldview has been formed by present pragmatic beliefs and overall conception of the world. It is caused by the impact of advertisement, television and other effects of contemporary consumerism. Nowadays, shopping centers, supermarkets, and television have become the principal spiritual needs, by which the society attempts to retrieve peace of mind. Advertised glamor images and brand names have taken the focus of our lives.
Thus, the novel exposes the way our society is overwhelmed with tabloid stories of celebrity worship, and compulsive consumerism in general. DeLillo defines "purer speech" within the sound of voices and depicts the poisonousness of our world by metaphors. The postmodern toxic world that gives people the fear of diseases and death rather than real certainty is presented. It is the world where the logic of consumerism manipulates people’s minds and behaviors.
In the film Fight Club (Uhls) consumerism is a contemporary movement, social and economic arrangement aimed at promotion of products and services in order to make people buy them in larger amounts. Fight Club presents two opposing characters of the consumer personality: the storyteller, known as Jack, and Tyler. Jack starts out as the consumer measuring the value of his life by material things, whereas Tyler has his own position in life. Jack does not have family or friends, and he buys things to fill his emptiness and lack of real emotions. Tyler has no weaknesses and usually says "things you own end up owing you" (Uhls 11).
The storyteller is the narrator, who initiated the idea of Fight Club’s creation with a purpose of having a controlled scene for fighting. He is depicted as a real consumer, who earns profits and a high status in society despite the chosen method. As the Fight Club started the activity, it established its rules. Tyler declared these rules: "The first rule of fight club is - you do not talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club...