What is the White Noise book about?
White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultramodern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism.
What is the message of White Noise?
White Noise, a book about the influence of fear on human life, focuses on small everyday worries, as well as deep, existential crises.
What kind of book is White Noise?
Novel
FictionPostmodern literatureHumor
White Noise/Genres
Why is the book called White Noise?
As it turns out, White Noise wasn’t Don DeLillo’s first choice for the title of this book. His actual first choice was Panasonic, since he wanted the “pan” part of the word (which means “all”) to describe how the “noise” of the modern world is everywhere.
Is White Noise based on a true story?
White Noise is based on the real life occurrence of E.V.P. -Electronic Voice Phenomenon-where the voices and images of the deceased are recorded in the White Noise created by modern electrical devices.
Is White Noise hard to read?
The average reader, reading at a speed of 300 WPM, would take 6 hours and 32 minutes to read White Noise by Don DeLillo. As an Amazon Associate, How Long to Read earns from qualifying purchases. Thank you for helping to keep this site running! Check it out on Amazon! Listen to the audiobook on Audible!
What does White Noise say about death?
Heinrich faces death dispassionately and analytically. Murray sees death all around him and remains continually fascinated and engaged by it. Winnie Richards notes that death adds texture to life, while Jack and Babette would give anything to avoid it.
What happens at the end of White Noise?
At the end of the book, Babette’s baby son Wilder decides to take his big-wheel tricycle for a jaunt across a busy highway. He barely makes it over without dying. Jack uses this final story to muse about how little kids and adults have different attitudes toward death.
What is the relationship of white noise to Jack’s fear of death?
Jack and Babette speculate that death might be nothing more than an eternal hum of white noise: detached bits of data, garbled gibberish, and meaningless sounds, all vibrating at an equal frequency so that nothing in particular stands out and everything remains potentially significant.
Why is Jack afraid of death in white noise?
Jack suffers from two linked fears: the fear of his own death, and the fear that he will be exposed as an essentially incompetent, insignificant man.
What is the airborne toxic event in White Noise?
In the second part of the novel, “The Airborne Toxic Event,” a chemical spill from a rail car releases a black noxious cloud over Jack’s home region, prompting an evacuation. Frightened by his exposure to the toxin (called Nyodene Derivative), Jack is forced to confront his mortality.
How does White Noise end?
What does white noise say about death?
How is White Noise a postmodern novel?
In White Noise, the postmodern condition is manifested as a kind of information overload, as the protagonist, Jack Gladney, moves through a world increasingly submerged in marketing imagery and media stimuli.
What happened to the wife in White Noise?
Sarah is later seriously injured by a fall from a balcony while possessed by the demons, an incident which was foreshadowed by Sarah’s image being among those on the EVP devices. Jonathan locates the site of his wife’s death by following signs on recordings and he also finds his wife’s abandoned car.
Why is white noise postmodernism?
What happens at the end of white noise?
How many kids does Jack have in white noise?
four
Narrator of the novel, and the chairman of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. Jack lives in Blacksmith, a quiet college town, with his fourth wife, Babette, and four of their children from previous marriages.