Critique of Cyber Culture in Don DeLillo's White Noise

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with how DeLillo’s White Noise dramatizes all the possible effects which youths’ unrestrained and uncritical indulgence in the practice of cyber culture can generate. White Noise explores the interaction of the media and popular culture that govern the forefront of the narrative. Aspects of consumer culture are scattered throughout the narrative. Simulating the constant presence of products and advertisements in consumers’ lives constitute the major component of the novel. Babette’s perception of mediated reality takes her to the track of infidelity. Gladney indulges in the shopping spree. He ludicrously seeks to invent the essence of his life via shopping spree. Only the information is available. None of the characters tends to cultivate passion for true knowledge. Instead, all of them are satisfied with the simulated version of reality. They no longer bother to know the immediate. They are tempted to the mediated reality. Individuals are treated as fragile units beset with hostile facts. Mediated and digitally simulated reality count a lot in the lives of Gladney, Babette, Bee and other off springs of Murray. Inherent inability compels him to dissimulate his innermost foibles and shortcomings. Inwardly he is trapped in the suffocating confines of life on Wall Street. To come out of his arid mercantile practices like digital mode of communication and encoding business codes, he develops fantasies. Thus White Noise projects the demerits of uncritical immersion in practice of cyber culture.