Don DeLillo's "White Noise"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses that Don DeLillo, in his novel "White Noise", makes the most of post-modern suggestions that is it the children who may speak and that their lack of experience in the complexities of the world tends to work to their benefit. The author explains that this complex novel is the story of its narrator, Jack Gladney, who has become a Hitler expert because it gives him the opportunity to provide just the right sound bite to get his own name known in an era in which celebrity is based more on glibness than on anything else. The paper concludes that, even when DeLillo intends for us to see in the children a sophistication about the world that should be beyond their years, we cannot quite help hearing the irony in these scenes because his characters are, to some extent, not characters at all, but simply vehicles for his beliefs.

From the Paper:

"Gladney has become a Hitler expert because it gives him the opportunity to provide just the right sound bite to get his own name known in an era in which celebrity is based more on glibness than on anything else, and indeed the similarity of his name to the words "glib" as well as "glad-handing" might well be intentional. Gladney has essentially created a product out of a mass murderer in the same way that a new car or odor-suppressing body product would be created and then marketed. He will do anything to make himself famous, and of course the first step in this process is to rid himself of any possible remnants of authenticity. He is who he thinks other people want him to be. Which is not to say that he is in some essential way false to himself, for he is not? He has so thoroughly disconnected himself from whatever it means to be a moral actor that there is no there to be false to. He is his image. He has gone beyond the possibility of being authentic. He is the antithesis of the person who is guided by a deep sense of spirituality."

More papers on Don DeLillo's "White Noise":

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• Analytical Essay # 123288 : "'White Noise' and 'Jasmine'"
• Book Review # 99120 : "'White Noise'"
• Book Review # 100968 : "White Noise" by Don DeLillo and "America" by Jean Baudrillard"

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