The Theme Of Lostness In White Noise From The Pespective Of Acoustic Narrative

Don DeLillo is one of the distinguished contemporary American writers.His novel White Noise was granted the National Book Award in 1985.The novel unfolds the narrative from the perspective of the protagonist Jack Gladney,and mainly talks about the American family’s daily life roared with white noises in the process of the Industrial Evolution.DeLillo builds a relationship between the white noise and the emotions such as lostness and fear of death in White Noise.Therefore,this thesis aims to conduct an analysis on the theme of lostness from the perspective of the acoustic narrative.To this end,the thesis initially summarizes the manifestations of white noises and their narrative functions separately.On this condition three categories of ideologies that result in the characters’lostness are disclosed.Finally,the thesis digs out how Jack Gladney steers out of the predicament,with the application of different techniques of auscultation in the acoustic narrative.The thesis consists of five parts.Introduction primarily introduces Don DeLillo,White Noise,related theory,literature review of the fiction at home and abroad,and its framework.In the first chapter,the thesis classifies the sounds into three manifestations:environmental sounds,conversations,and silences,whose functions are respectively implication of the theme,enrichment of characters,and revelation of overtones.The second chapter illustrates the reasons why the characters cannot construct their identities so as to suffer from lostness,which is presented by the soundscapes.Practically,the bewilderment results from the simulacrum of hyperreality from technologism,symbolization of material demands from consumerism,and self-bewilderment from nihilism.The third chapter discloses the process of self-restoration in which characters utilize the techniques of collective auscultation and individual auscultation of those sounds.In a nutshell,Jack manages to find a self-consistent approach to a balance between the complicated external world and the internal space.