Treatment of Media Technology in DeLillo‘s White Noise: A Critique

Abstract

This thesis has analyzed the treatment of media in novel White Noise by Don DeLillo. The key concepts in the study of media have been presented and explained in regard to how they are represented in the DeLillo‘s novel plot, characters and nature of language itself shows extreme assertion of media, television, visual data and radio sounds which enforces every character to fall in the ditch of death anxiety, consumerism and alienation. This thesis has also tried to show the relation between media and human being‘s everyday interdependency in terms of building perceptions and ideas by looking at ads appear on television, billboards and other visual medium. Media broadcasts or virtual world creates bizarre speculation of the choices of life and death. Moreover, the character's inability to discern the reality from artifice where malice technology unveils dark aspects of skeptical symptoms aroused in Jack‘s family. In the novel presence of media proves both intimidating and distressful simulations, and media saturation of real events in real life of Jack and Murray. Even television reports show Neodyne Airborne Toxic event in a threatening way that all the residents of the Blacksmith Town area think about the future effect of airborne toxic borne disease in respiratory system and skin. The novel White Noise highlights the collision of language and media. In this collision, as the analysis of the novel shows, language turns out to be inadequate. When this happens, the media becomes all the more powerful.