The Phenomenon Of The Consumer Society Embodied In White Noise

Don Delillo is one of the most outstanding novelists in modern America. He is a prolific writer. Delillo's works have received substantial critical recognition and he has been given many honors and awards. He has been a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature for Underword (1997). He is on the lists of major contemporary American authors. When his White Noise was published in 1985, it became an unexpected commercial success, and 300,000 copies were sold. White Noise has often been dubbed Don Delillo's"breakout book"and it has won the National Book Award. White Noise raises the author's art to a higher level. A number of enthusiastic critical notices made the novel one of the most widely acclaimed fictional works of the 1980s. Novelist Jay McInerney lavished praise on the book, calling it"…a stunning performance from one of our finest and most intelligent novelists. Delillo's reach is broad and deep, combining acute observation of the textures of American life and analytic rigor."The thesis falls into four parts:Part I. IntroductionThough acclaimed as a literary giant in America, Don Delillo is still unfamiliar to Chinese readers. It is necessary to present a brief introduction of the author. Similarly, having received enthusiastic critical notices in English-speaking countries, White Noise has not been acknowledged in China. We must know the major contents of the novel. This part will present the general reviews of White Noise and the central argument this essay focus on. Since I will analyze it from the angle of the consumer society, a general introduction about the consumer society is necessary.Part II. The Phenomenon of the Consumer Society Embodied in White Noise The economic foundation of the emergence of the consumer society is revealed first. Renaissance, Enlightenment, Protestantism and the Industrial Revolution contribute to the emergence of the consumer society respectively.The Consumer society is different from other kinds of society. But the remarkable representations embodied in White Noise are two. One is the maximum abundance of merchandise. There are a lot of commodities in the society. Don Delillo records prosperity and material consumption in society in detail in White Noise. The other is the commercialization of academic research. In the consumer society, not only a large body of cultural manufacture is turned out, but also all sorts of intellectuals, ideas, and even art are manufactured. Jack Gladney, the hero of White Noise, is the founder and chairman of Hitler...