Ubiquitousness Of Death

Don DeLillo, one of the representative postmodernist writers in America, is acontroversial writer. Most of his works center on international and political affairs, whichhave incurred criticisms remarking that DeLillo’s novels cannot be technically calledliterature, since he has mixed his imagined plots into real historical events. However,unlike his previous works, DeLillo’ White Noise turns to domestic trivia, showingDeLillo’s concern for people’s spiritual world in the consumer society.White Noise is about the bizarre life of the Gladney family under the influence of theconsumer society. The thesis aims to analyze the impacts of the consumer society onpeople’s spiritual world and daily life, and tries to conclude these impacts as the mainfactors that eventually make people unable to escape death and fear. Combining the theoryof simulation and simulacra as well as Jean Baudrillard’s view on the consumer society, thethesis tries to put forward phenomena of spiritual “death” through the analysis of spiritualproblems manifested by respective characters, such as collapse of religion and belief,family trust crisis, alienation and identity crisis, which are the fundamental reasons thatlead to physical death. The thesis also aims to analyze the factors that directly lead tophysical death including blind worship of technology and mass media and the measurestaken by the protagonists as well as the plots of the last chapter in the novel so as to deduceDeLillo’s pessimistic attitude towards death in the consumer society but in the meantime,DeLillo proposes a plausible way that it is a possible to escape death if everyone can livelike Wilder. Meanwhile, his attitude is of significance for the development of thecontemporary society.