Death, Noise, and (Un)plotting in Don DeLillo's White Noise

Abstract

Critics have approached the pervasive images of Death in Don DeLillos White Noise primarily from an existential point of view, emphasizing its links to the alienation and dehumanizing aspects of postmodern life in todays United State. This paper attempts to provide an alternative reading of White Noise by configuring the theme of death withing the larger frame of science discourses. This paper observes that the disruption of the story line functions like noise from outside of the system. This new way of reading White Noise offers another possibility of understanding otherwise seemingly discrete and separate episodes and events from the story into a more coherent whole. What has become evident from this reading is that DeLillo attempts to deconstruct the binary oppositions of death and life as well as of noise and meaning in his own original way, not simply in a puny mimicry of Derridian deconstruction.