A Study On Alienation In White Noise By Don Delillo

Don DeLillo(1936--) is considered as one of the most prominent novelists in the twentieth century of America and has always been dubbed as the "postmodern novelist" title. White Noise was published in 1985, which is known as the most representative work of American postmodern literature, and wins the National Book Award in the USA. Since the publication of White Noise, a number of scholars and experts began to interpret this novel from different perspectives, but few analyse it from the alienation view. Based on the alienation theories of Marx, Marcuse and Fromm, five alienation phenomena can be found in White Noise, which show that the alienation is common in our life, society and in nature. The alienation phenomena is so common that they push us to analyse the consequences and crises that haunt post-modern and contemporary people, and our society, which includes several aspects, including the trust crisis, the identity crisis, the fear of death, the spread of the mass media,the environment pollution, the violence for performance purpose, and the hesitance for technology. Last but not the least, we propose the solution. Two ways to solve the alienation crises that are discussed in the thesis, establishing the correct value and getting back to love-with the hope that those two solutions could be helpful for the healthy development of humans, society and nature.This thesis consists of 6 chapters.Chapter One is introduction which is divided into 3 parts: first, it introduces Don DeLillo and White Noise; second, it is about the Literature Review on White Noise and the significance of studies; third, the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is the theoretical foundations including 3 parts: first is the introduction to alienation; second part is Marx’s alienation theory; the third part is the introduction to modern alienation theories.Chapter Three is the alienation phenomena in White Noise including consumption alienation, technology alienation, the mental alienation, and the nature alienation.Chapter Four is the consequences of alienationinducing:first, the crises of humans which consist of the relation crisis, the trust crisis, the identity crisis; second, the social and natural crises which consist of the side effects of mass media,the environment pollution, the violence for performance purpose and the hesitance for technology.Chapter Five is about the solutions to alienation including: first, returning back to love which includes friends’ love, parental love, affectionatelove and self love; second, establishing a rational guidance to value which is made up of developing a rational lifestyle by consumption and leading green and ecological ways of living and producing.Chapter Six is the conclusion which summarizes the main points of the thesis. Based on the alienation theories, we analyze the alienation phenomena and consequences of alienation, and propose solutions to make a little contribution to the healthy development of humans, society and nature.