White Noise

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation.”

Part 1: Waves and Radiation

The novel opens with Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler Studies at the College-on-the-Hill, and his fourth wife, Babette, living in a small college town with their blended family. Their lives are filled with mundane routines, consumerist habits, and an underlying dread of death. Jack, who invented Hitler Studies despite not speaking German, is deeply insecure about his academic legitimacy. Meanwhile, Babette secretly takes an experimental drug called Dylar, which is supposed to suppress the fear of death.

Part 2: The Airborne Toxic Event

A chemical spill from a nearby train accident releases a toxic cloud over the town, forcing an evacuation. Jack is exposed to the airborne toxin, referred to as “Nyodene D.,” and is told he may face an uncertain but potentially fatal health consequence. The family flees to a makeshift shelter, where their anxieties about mortality intensify. The disaster exposes the fragility of modern life and the inadequacy of institutional responses to crises.

Part 3: Dylarama

Jack becomes obsessed with death after the toxic exposure and discovers Babette’s secret use of Dylar. He tracks down the shadowy figure who supplied her with the drug, a man named Willie Mink. In a climactic confrontation, Jack shoots Mink in a motel room but then helps him survive, blurring the line between violence and absurdity. The novel ends with the family watching a supermarket sunset, still surrounded by the white noise of consumer culture and existential dread.

Key ideas

• The omnipresence of media and consumer culture shaping identity.
• The fear of death as a driving force behind human behavior.
• The illusion of safety in modern technological society.
• The breakdown of traditional family and academic structures.
• The absurdity of institutional responses to disaster.