Unreliable Narration in White Noise

The story told in Don DeLillo's White Noise involves many modern themes, many of which have not yet been covered in our other stories. Themes such as constant media saturation and an overbearing amount of technology allow for new methods of storytelling and narration, along with story elements that could not exist in novels set in earlier time periods. With these modern changes come new forms of narration, some involving unreliable narration as we have come to know it and others taking the genre in a new direction.

Jack Gladney has several troubling factors in his life: his extreme fear of his own mortality, his thoughts that his career is a sham (as shown in his attempt to learn the German language, despite already being a North American pioneer in "Hitler Studies"), his apparent obsession with the media (shown by the common interjections from the television, radio or telephone), all while trying to maintain a normal family life. All of these points add to his unreliability as our narrator, especially toward the center of the novel when the "airborne toxic event" and his Nyodene D is discovered, eventually all culminating in the shooting of Willie Mink.

Despite this, the most interesting form of narration comes from the technology present in every aspect of Jack's life. At random points, mostly in his house but occasionally elsewhere, Jack will interrupt the conversation he is having and describe what he can hear from the television or radio. Deeper, hidden meanings to these broadcasted messages can be traced back from the conversation he's currently having, for example when his daughter Bee visited. Jack describes how different she was compared to the rest of the family, saying that Bee is usually one to judge their actions compared to her own. In the midst of this, Jack describes the television saying "This creature has developed a complicated stomach in keeping with its leafy diet" (95). As Bee has grown and developed into a different person with a different lifestyle than his (she travels frequently while Jack simply works and lives in Blacksmith), the creature in the television program has developed a stomach for what was once a different diet. Through these interjections, DeLillo can add details for the reader to pick up on, although many will be missed unless read diligently.

Even more fascinating is the grip television has on everyone in the story, which affects several characters' actions and attitudes. The conversations Jack has with his family are extremely abnormal compared to what a more traditional family would talk about. The topic of conversation changes with such rapidity, and the input his children have to the subject is so minor and ultimately useless that it adequately represents the experience of "flipping" through channels on a television set, reliving the experience of having an almost "content overload." This way of conversing gives all of the main characters (Murray excluded, who seems to have his own opinions and intentions) the same bland, monotone voice, yet still completely random, much like how someone would feel after watching television for too long. The idea of media saturation creating a new narrative voice in this case culminates when Bee first arrived at the airport, while Jack and his ex-wife Tweedy were listening to the victim of the near-plane crash and exclaimed that "there is no media in Iron City," Bee said "They went through all that for nothing?" (92). The current wave of technology and the idea of constant media renewal certainly affect the narrative voice in White Noise, in ways unseen in our previous novels. It makes for a refreshing new take in "unreliable narratives" and I hope to see more of it in the future, especially as technology becomes more sophisticated.

Source: White Noise, Don DeLillo.