The Geography of Non-places in DeLillo’s White Noise

초록

This essay investigates how the setting plays a crucial role in developing Jack Gladney as a character in White Noise and criticizing the “typical” landscape of American suburb. Marc Augé’s theory about non-places—functional places for transport, transit, commerce, and leisure—sheds a new light on the setting as an exclusively functional space filled with non-places. This article discusses how some places that Jack frequently visits such as the shopping mall, the supermarket, his own automobile, and his home are portrayed as non-places. In these places, Jack cannot have a real connection with his family but lives under an illusion that he does. In non-places, his identity is something transitional; whether it is a consumer or the head of the Hitler Studies, it is all a role-playing, which makes him anxious. In the timeless, sealed-off world of Blacksmith, he believes that he is safe and protected from the Real, but he also sense its invisible presence. After learning about his impending death in the evacuation camp, another form of non-places, he awakens from illusion and ignorance and attempts to transgress the frontier between places and non-places. This essay pays special attention to the last chapter of the novel and discusses how the ending with Wilder’s crossing the expressway, Jack’s watching the sunset on the overpass, and the consumers’ confusion in the supermarket suggest that the frontiers start being recognized and bring disturbances to the non-places in White Noise.

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