76 pages • 2 hours read
Don DeLilloA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
White Noise is a novel about the overwhelming amount of data, information, static, interference, distractions, and media interactions we receive every day. It’s remarkable that DeLillo wrote this novel in an era before the Internet, when The Ubiquity of Technology and Mass Media seems mild compared to today.
How would Jack’s view of reality be different if he lived in today’s volatile media environment, with corporate networks presenting fractured and frequently competing ideas of basic facts? How would these characters respond if they had smartphones buzzing with updates throughout the novel? Most importantly, has the problem of the “white noise,” the static that keeps us from seeing reality, gotten better or worse?
Below are observations that Jack makes about the mass media surrounding him. Discuss how relevant each one would be if White Noise were set today, rather than in the early 1980s. How relevant does each quote remain today? Are there any revisions you would make to these quotations to adapt them to the present day?
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