In his comic novel White Noise, Don DeLillo critiques the superficial, materialistic, and bewildering culture of the United States in the late twentieth century. Although in some moments the author seems to be suggesting an element of humanity worth respect and/or salvation, in general DeLillo presents a human race utterly lost in a world full of madness, rage, confusion, and, especially, the things of modern consumerism. Prevailing over and under all of this is the "white noise" of the title, what amounts to a stew of sensory input which leaves the individual hypnotized and utterly discontent. American consumerism in the novel has become a religion of sorts, but a religion which gives no consolation or salvation. The American Dream, in theory, may consist of living in a paradise of consumer options, but DeLillo pictures it as a nightmare akin to a low-key hell in which human beings are inundated and profoundly burdened by their attachment to things.
The novel begins with the protagonist, Jack Gladney, watching students arriving at the college where he teaches Nazism:
The . . . station wagons were loaded down with . . . suitcases . . . ; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts . . . ; stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; . . . records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets . . . ; the junk food (3).
Jack is certainly not transported to consumer bliss watching the students arrive under this avalanche of things to which they are mindlessly addicted. To the contrary, the opening scene and the second scene (in which he reflects on his own possessions) deliver him to thoughts of another recurrent theme in the book--death. Later, death will be named directly again and again as an obsession of the protagonist, but, in this first mention, in a show of subtlety not often found in the novel, DeLillo understates his case:
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