『화이트 노이즈』를 통해 본 기술시대의 욕망 (Desire in the Age of Technology: Don DeLillo’s White Noise)

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초록

This paper is an attempt to read Don DeLillo’s White Noise as a diagnosis of the age of modern technology. In his work, DeLillo explores the way technology has become not merely a pervasive and mortal threat to each of the characters, but also a deeply ingrained mode of existing and way of thinking. The fragmentary narrative technique such as the abrupt intrusion of TV sounds and the names of commercial goods into the plot serves to represent the contemporary American culture.
Laden with “lust removed from nature”, the technologically oriented people are deeply addicted to consumerism and the fear of death; as the author put it once, the extraordinary wonder of things is somehow related to the death fear that has been repressed in our perception. Jack, the professor-narrator whose major is Hitler, feels authenticated and confirmed when he is accepted by the invisible monetary system, while his wife Babbett is obsessed with unfathomable fear of death.
In the middle of the novel, Jack and his family have to be evacuated from their Midwestern town after “the airborne toxic event”. In chapter 21, we get to observe the absurdity and numbness of modern technological system; Simuvac who is in charge of the situation sees here only a chance to use the real event in order to rehearse the simulation, and Babbett believes every aspect of human experience can be corrected through technology. This is precisely the way technology reduces reality to a postmodern simulacrum.
In the children of the novel who look precocious and a little pessimistic we may find the way to overcome the technological way of thinking. When Heinrich’s skeptic, yet intelligent exploration of the way of things around him is put together with Wilder’s innocent assurance, we can find a glimpse of hope to get out of the apocalyptic world.

영어초록

This paper is an attempt to read Don DeLillo’s White Noise as a diagnosis of the age of modern technology. In his work, DeLillo explores the way technology has become not merely a pervasive and mortal threat to each of the characters, but also a deeply ingrained mode of existing and way of thinking. The fragmentary narrative technique such as the abrupt intrusion of TV sounds and the names of commercial goods into the plot serves to represent the contemporary American culture.
Laden with “lust removed from nature”, the technologically oriented people are deeply addicted to consumerism and the fear of death; as the author put it once, the extraordinary wonder of things is somehow related to the death fear that has been repressed in our perception. Jack, the professor-narrator whose major is Hitler, feels authenticated and confirmed when he is accepted by the invisible monetary system, while his wife Babbett is obsessed with unfathomable fear of death.
In the middle of the novel, Jack and his family have to be evacuated from their Midwestern town after “the airborne toxic event”. In chapter 21, we get to observe the absurdity and numbness of modern technological system; Simuvac who is in charge of the situation sees here only a chance to use the real event in order to rehearse the simulation, and Babbett believes every aspect of human experience can be corrected through technology. This is precisely the way technology reduces reality to a postmodern simulacrum.
In the children of the novel who look precocious and a little pessimistic we may find the way to overcome the technological way of thinking. When Heinrich’s skeptic, yet intelligent exploration of the way of things around him is put together with Wilder’s innocent assurance, we can find a glimpse of hope to get out of the apocalyptic world.

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