No one on this earth can escape the sounds of noise. Noise is this unwanted, unnerving sound that causes an irritation in most people. Just as no one can escape noise, no one can escape death. Death is probably one of the most feared words in the English language. Death is this undesired uncertainty that threatens our belief that our lives will never end. Its causes most people to panic due to its unpredictability. Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise tells the unusual story of how Jack Gladney, the protagonist and narrator of the novel, and his family illustrate the postmodern ideas of religion, death, and popular culture.
The theme of death’s weight over the characters’ mentality, lifestyle, and media manipulation is used often throughout DeLillo’s …show more content…
The title White Noise is a suggestion that death is like white noise, something that is in the background of our lives, and is always there. It’s not until your young adult years that you start to look at your life as a whole. You start planning out your future to prepare yourself not to fail because you realize that you only have one shot at life. Children don’t necessarily have this issue. They still have an innocence that even adults wished they still had. Children tend to live their lives without a worry in the world. Children are just learning these ways and rules of society and of life. Society hasn’t gotten the opportunity to manipulate their innocent minds yet. But as they start to grow older, they start to realize that they only have so much time to accomplish every goal that they set up for themselves. The first time they experience death, whether it is a family member or friend, their whole world is opened up into this realization that we are all going to die someday. That is what starts this little thought in the back of our minds that remind us about death. And occasionally this side thought, this white noise, will become louder, and louder. And just like Jack Gladney’s case, it will take over the mind and bring you fear. Jack finds the feeling of death to be very clear and real, but he tries to rely on his modern consumer lifestyle as an escape from his
The theme of death’s weight over the characters’ mentality, lifestyle, and media manipulation is used often throughout DeLillo’s …show more content…
The title White Noise is a suggestion that death is like white noise, something that is in the background of our lives, and is always there. It’s not until your young adult years that you start to look at your life as a whole. You start planning out your future to prepare yourself not to fail because you realize that you only have one shot at life. Children don’t necessarily have this issue. They still have an innocence that even adults wished they still had. Children tend to live their lives without a worry in the world. Children are just learning these ways and rules of society and of life. Society hasn’t gotten the opportunity to manipulate their innocent minds yet. But as they start to grow older, they start to realize that they only have so much time to accomplish every goal that they set up for themselves. The first time they experience death, whether it is a family member or friend, their whole world is opened up into this realization that we are all going to die someday. That is what starts this little thought in the back of our minds that remind us about death. And occasionally this side thought, this white noise, will become louder, and louder. And just like Jack Gladney’s case, it will take over the mind and bring you fear. Jack finds the feeling of death to be very clear and real, but he tries to rely on his modern consumer lifestyle as an escape from his