Experience · Memory · Narration

Don DeLillo is one of the famous contemporary postmodern novelists of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries in America. As a prolific writer, Don DeLillo has received much attention and critical acclaim, with the publication of White Noise in 1985, his"breakthrough book", which brings Don DeLillo the National Book Award in 1986. Many critics sing high praise for the novel's structure, consumerism, and the skilled application of postmodernism creative techniques but show little attention on traumatic features.Based on the narrative theory by Rimmon Kenan and Shoshana Felman, especially the trauma theory by Cathy Caruth, Anne White, Sigmund Freud, this thesis aims at revealing traumatic features of White Noise, of which trauma narrative and post-traumatic stressed disorder of characters are the most obvious ones. Through an application of these theories to the analysis of protagonist's traumatic etiology, experiences, symptoms and memory, we will be able to see clearly White Noise is a trauma novel.The whole thesis consists of six parts including an introduction and a conclusion:In the Introduction, the thesis mainly introduces the reason of its analysis and its structure to lay for a solid foundation for the following analysis. Chapter one is a brief introduction of Don DeLillo and the sketch of White Noise as well as the research status. Chapter two introduces trauma theories, including the definitions of trauma and trauma theory, the historical development of trauma theory, and the relation between trauma and fiction. Chapter three concentrates on the trauma narrative of the character-narrator Jack Gladney as well as the causes and experiences and symptoms of trauma on Jack Gladney and other characters to reveal human living state. Chapter Four deals with the narrative technique repetition integrated with trauma and Jack Gladney working through the trauma memory from the perspective of Nazi's murder logic. In the conclusion, the author's deep worry and concerns about the living state and living environment have been clearly revealed.