White Noise Analysis

Blacksmith is your typical American college town. You might even say it's painfully typical. Jack teaches at the liberal arts college called The-College-On-The-Hill, which could definitely be a...

When you're a writer who likes to go off on philosophical rants every now and then, it's great to have a first-person narrator. This way, whenever someone accuses you of being too intellectual...

White Noise is a pretty funny book. It's dry and observant but also full of straight-up weirdness. This blend of wit and WTF is summed up pretty well when Murray Siskind announces, I'm here t...

Jack Gladney is a smart cat. Dude's a distinguished university professor who's taught thousands of students during his career. He even gets to wear a ceremonial robe to work, and likes clear...

If you're going to read Don DeLillo, you need to be ready for some sophisticated language. But that doesn't mean his sentences are impossible to read. For example, check out the opening line of...

As it turns out, White Noise wasn't Don DeLillo's first choice for the title of this book. His actual first choice was Panasonic, since he wanted the "pan" part of the word (which means "all") to...

A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and...

White Noise is a book that tends to be taught more in universities than in high schools. One of the reasons is because the book pokes a lot of fun at university professors and faculties. Another...

Exposition (Initial Situation) The exposition section of White Noise is way longer than in most novels. DeLillo takes the entire first-third of this book (called "Waves and Radiation") to sketc...

A young hero or heroine falls under the shadow of the dark power. In the first hundred pages of this book, we get the sense that something isn't quite right with Jack Gladney's life. Something i...

Luckily for you, Shmoopers, Don DeLillo had the good sense to divide this book into three main parts, which makes the whole Three Act Plot Analysis thing easy-peasy. The first act (or section) o...

You think Jack and Babette have a cramped house? Don DeLillo grew up in a tiny house in the Bronx that had eleven people living in it. It turns out there's an indie rock band out there called "The...

Jack might seem like a pretty boring guy in day-to-day life. But when he gets behind closed doors with his wife, Babette, he likes to get down n' dirty. The novel is fairly descriptive about som...

Adolph Hitler (1.4)Darwinism (Charles Darwin) (4.7)Howard Hughes (21.411)Holy Shroud of Turin (21.414)Lyndon B. Johnson (21.424) Pop Culture References Elvis Presley (3.15)Marilyn Monroe (21.4...