Modernism In White Noise

Is the modern lifestyle fulfilling or merely a facade? It’s easy to get caught up in life by focusing on personal status, wealth, and perfection, but does a surface level life satiate the needs and wants of people? Modernists such as T.S. Eliot and Katherine Anne Porter have pondered this question in their poems and narratives, further probing at the authenticity of modern life and searching for new forms of expression. Just as Eliot and Porter dabbled in this proposition in works released from 1910-1930, modern authors of novels also began exploring the same ideas. The 310 page novel White Noise (1984) further explores the ideas presented by hailing modernists. By using first person point of view in White Noise, Delillo showcases how Jack

Throughout the novel, Delillo describes a busy supermarket full of people of all ages and sizes. Although a variety of people are in the supermarket, Jack points out that most of them “move about muttering with the wary look of people in institutional corridors” (159). He continues to describe their movements as a “sad numb shuffle in every aisle” (161). As Jack conveys the supermarket from the first person point of view, readers understand his views on how modern life affects people. Ultimately, Jack thinks that this selfish, inauthentic life that people live is tearing them apart, turning them into zombie-like monotonous drones that numbly go through life. He shows readers how, inevitably, these people fall into a weary life. Later in the novel, the supermarket scene returns to conclude Jack’s story, transmitting the same tone of modern life. This time he points out that “They try to work their way through confusion. But in the end it doesn 't matter what they see or think they see” (310). Jack expresses that people are so lost in modern life that it does not matter what they do now; they are too caught up in the system to save themselves, the system that lines them up one by one to live the same uneventful modern life. One by one people “wait together, regardless of age...a slowly moving line” (310). The chain of events passes on, and the supermarket people symbolize how mankind ultimately submits to the grasps of modern life, resolving Jack’s looming