The Failure of Technology in White Noise by Don Delillo Essay -- White

The Failure of Technology in White echo by get into DelilloOne particularly unfortunate trait of contemporary society is our futile attempt to use engine room to immunize ourselves against the forethought of finish. The failure of technology in this regard is the general subject of Don Delillos book White hinderance. Throughout this novel, technology is depicted as the sick messenger of our common fate, an increasing sense of dread over acquittance of control of our lives and the approach of inevitable death in spite of the avoid promises of technology. In this essay I will examine Delillos portrayal of technology and its role in our society. The title of Delillos book, White Noise, reminds one of an electronic still of the sort encountered on television when a station goes off the air. only I think white noise can also connect to the indiscriminate flow of schooling we atomic number 18 exposed to on a daily basis in our modern society, that which ultimately destroys t he immediacy of real life. If you see enough people gunned down on television, enough iron out bodies in twisted cars, enough violence, destruction and despair in the newspapers, you uprise numb to it. In one sense, I think this is what White Noise is. Have you seen those devices they sell for insomniacs? They are white noise generators intended to drift us to sleep. White noise is sound at all frequencies spread indiscriminately, and that is what Delillo hints that television and the modern media are doing to us now. The indiscriminate flood of information is not making our society more aware rather, it is putting us all to sleep. White Noise is a book obsessed with death at the hands of our own technology. The protagonist is a middle elderly man who is the chairman of a department of Hitle... ...e novel where the products on the supermarket shelves are quietly rearranged, throwing a sense of shock and panic into the shoppers (i.e. the masses) until they can lay out to the n ew system. After surviving the initial traumatic change, we see the shoppers pronto resume their mindless lives on the road to death, comfortably numb and smugly secure. This is a sad indictment of what life in this twentieth nose candy is for our media and technology-manipulated American society. Delillos analysis implies, then, that safety can only be put together in conformity and a dead life dictated by others. Furthermore, life is only really experienced at its fullest in the random moments when the white noise breaks down and becomes silent momentarily, only to quickly hook and embrace us once again in its death grip. workings CitedDeLillo, Don. White Noise. London Picador, 1986.