A Study Of White Noise From The Perspective Of Naturalism

Don Delillo is widely taken as one of the most influential post-modernism novelists in contemporary American literature. White Noise is his eighth novel, and it receives high acclaims in the literary. In this novel, Delillo shows us a panorama of American life in twentieth-century, and critically examines many facets of the society he lives in. He displays the theme of death by depicting the mass media, pollution and other kinds of pressure in commercial society. This book is about "live or death" in modern society, and it is called "a Death Book of America". It is a classic representative of American post-modern literature. Till now, most studies on this novel are focus on the post-modernism and collective unconsciousness facet. There is few scholar pays attention to the naturalistic factors in this post-modernism novel. This thesis aims to study the novel from the perspective of naturalism. Through analyses, it is verified that naturalism has great value in post-modern literature and will influence the following creation to a large extent.There are five parts in the thesis. The first part is introduction, providing a brief introduction about the writer and his works. Though Don Delillo is very famous in American and other western countries, he is still unfamiliar to Chinese readers. So it is necessary to give a brief introduction to the author and his works. The review of studies on this novel at home and abroad till now is also included in this part. In addition, this part also contains the value of this study.The second part analyses American naturalism in general, including its generation, connotation and obstacles of development in America. Through sorting the development skeleton of naturalism and its features, this part helps readers seize the main ideology of naturalism and provides a basis to get the main idea of this thesis.The third part and the fourth part are the main body of this thesis. The third part is about the inheritances of naturalism shown in White Noise. It is analyzed in three aspects:the narrative strategy, characterization and the theme of death. To support these arguments, a lot of examples in the novel are provided in this part. Evidences in this part prove that the postmodernism work White Noise inherits the ideologies of naturalism.The fourth part is about the development of naturalism in post-modern literary works. It is discussed from three facts:extension of theme in new areas, materialization of subjective psychology and the usage of metaphor in White Noise. New characters provide naturalism a larger space to improve itself. Here, a deep analysis is made to demonstrate the development of naturalism and show the value and strong vitality of naturalism in post-modern literature.The last part is the conclusion, noting the main contents of the thesis, the meaning of development of naturalism in White Noise and the value of naturalism in post-modern literature. The thesis provides a new perspective for the study of Don Delillo and his White Noise, and makes readers reflect the value of naturalism in post-modern literature and modern society.