Listen To The Roar Of Human Anxiety

Being one of the most famous and most discussed postmodern novelists, Don DeLillo whose works explore aspects of the contemporary American life and provide profound meditations on postmodern human life, has become the darling of the foreign academy. The most representative White Noise has often been dubbed as his "breakout book", earning more and more concern. This thesis will try to provide a thorough analysis of its reflections of postmodern society by using the simulacra theory of postmodern French cultural theorist Jean Baudrilllard, emphasizing on the revelation of the anxieties of human beings of our age. With a comprehensive analysis of the novel, the author firstly offers an analysis of the title or the term "White Noise", which is represented by various sounds and noises in the novel that produce a strong feeling of saturation and excessiveness. Along with excessive noise, the novel tells a story full of excessive media and consumption, therefore, the second chapter attempts an analysis of another two excessivenesses (media and consumption), and how the "hyper-reality" generated by them affects or even encroaches human identity and the authenticity of beings. The third chapter provides an analysis of how DeLillo presents simulated death in this novel, and how death is related to White Noise. Lastly, the fourth chapter endeavors a study of DeLillo's attitude towards the death-evasion or death-defying efforts made by the characters in the novel. The meaning and purpose of this study is, through a most penetrating observation, to concentrate the reading of White Noise on its spiritual and moral value, its exposure of fear, love and desire, etc, the terms postmodernist critics seem to dismiss. Different from the previous comments and criticisms on this novel that emphasize its postmodern quality in narrative technique and structure arrangement, etc, the central concern of this thesis is how the author urges us to listen to the NOISE around and within us, and observe the wonder, the strangeness and the uncertainty of the postmodern society.