earticle

영어

In White Noise, Don DeLillo carefully investigates the causal interrelationship between technology and the obsessive fear of death in postmodern society. The two social and psychological elements of postmodernity are closely interconnected with each other in their function. Technology becomes the process and result of intellectual human activities through which he performs cultural transformation of nature for his successful adaptation to it. The fear of death, a fundamental psychological condition of human beings, gets distorted and amplified by the influence of modern technology. This paper examines the socio-psychological features of postmodern experience suggested in White Noise by focusing on the difference of the natural and cultural qualities of experience of its main characters. In the life of Jack Gladney’s family, the main characters of the novel, symbolic or cultural experience overpowers physical or natural experience. Their life is in the condition of the surfeit of the one and the lack of the other. Some of the characters such as Jack and Orest show an extraordinary concern toward the value of purely physical function of their bodies. Yet most of them are unaware of the fact that their life is excessively dependent upon the power of technology and the function of symbolic experience. DeLillo maintains a satirical viewpoint to the overwhelming influence of modern technology on the life of those characters, which in turn causes the excess of symbolic experience and the uncontrollable fear of death for them. However, DeLillo does not suggest that we can disregard the value of symbolic experience which is rooted in the ontological condition of human species.