BOOK - All American Literature in The 20th Century Black

Faculty of Arts
Menoufyia University
Faculty of Arts
English Department
In
‫األدب األمـريـكي فى الــقــرن الـعــشـريــن‬

Compiled & Edited
By
Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

2023
American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

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Copyright © 1st Edition 2017
2nd Edition 2023
American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview
Al-Shams Printing Press: Shebin El-Kom, Menoufiya, Egypt

All Rights reserved for the author
The Author: Radwan El-Sobky
The Title: American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopy and
recording without permission in writing from the author.
‫حقوق الطبع والنشر محفوظة للمؤلف‬

‫ رضوان جبر السبكى‬/ ‫ الدكتور‬: ‫المؤلف‬
‫ال يجوز طبع أو نقل أو تصوير أي جزء من هذا الكتاب إال بتصريح مكتوب من المؤلف‬
Dar Alkotob
2017 - 16615 ‫رقم اإليداع بدار الكتب المصرية‬

I. S. B. N. 978-977-90-0303-0 ‫الترقيم الدولي‬
Deposit Number in Dar Alkotob Almasreya 2017 – 16615

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Form (10)
Course Specification
1. Course Data
Course Code: Course Title: Year/Level:
EN 424 American Literature in the 20th Century Fourth Year
Specialization: Contact Hours: Lectures Practical sessions
English 0
Language and
2
-
Literature
2. Course The course aims at enabling students to:
Objectives (A) Develop a strong understanding of the main trends of standard
American literature.
(B) Learn to apply their knowledge in both written and oral
communication on the topic.
(C) Develop the skill of editing their own written texts and monitor
spoken performance.
3. Course Intended Learning Outcomes
A. Knowledge By the end of the course the students will have developed
and knowledge of the following:
understanding A (1) Learn about the branches of the American literature
A (2) Study at close hand samples of the plays, novels and poetry
By American writers of the twentieth century
A (3) Differentiate between the various trends of American forms of
-
letters
B. Cognitive By the end of the course the students will have developed the ability
Skills to:
B (1) Analyze the hierarchical structure of the 2th century American
literature
B (2) Recognize the contexts of various forms of American literature
B (3) Recognize the relationship between the various genres of
American Literature
B (4) Analyze the forms and genres of American literature
-
C. Professional/ Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:

Practical Skills C (1) Produce well-structured oral and written texts of various types
in English on American works of art

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C (2) Edit their written critical texts
C (3) Use the accurate terminology in conducting their analysis
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D. General Skills By the end of the course, students will have developed the skills of:
D (1) Working with others collaboratively
D (2) Searching online for information and texts on American
literature
-
D (3) Planning, organizing, and setting priorities for their learning
4. Topics Week
Course Introduction
Content Chapter 1: American Fiction and Prose in the 1- 3
20th century
1. What is Modern American Prose?
2. Literary Trends in American Fiction and Prose in the 20 th
century
3. Harlem Renaissance or The New Negro Movement of Afro-
American Novelists or The U.S. Black Literature 18
4. Jewish American Fiction
5. The Beat Generation (1940s -1950s)
6. Literature of Chinese-American Diaspora
7. Indo- American Literature
8. 20th Century Science Fiction in America
9. Fantasy American Literature in the 20th century
Chapter 2: American Drama in the 20th Century 4- 6
1. Modern American Drama -
2. Modernism in American Drama -
3. Experimentalism in American drama
4. Expressionism in American drama
5. The Importance of American Drama in English Literature
6. Features of American Drama
7. Famous American Playwrights in the 20th C
Chapter 3: American Poetry in the 20th Century 7-9
1. Traditionalism in American Poetry
2. Idiosyncratic American Poets
3. Experimental American Poetry
4. The Black Mountain School of American Poetry
5. The San Francisco School of American Poetry
6. The Beat Poets in America
7. The New York School of American Poetry
8. Surrealism and Existentialism in American Poetry
9. Samples of the 20th Century American Poets

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Chapter 4: American Literary Text (Novel, Play, 10-12
Poems)
1. Introduction
2. Plot
3. Short Summary
4. Characters
5. Major Themes
6. Setting
7. Conflict
8. Motifs
9. Symbolism
Test 13
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5. Teaching and  Showing videos on the related set plays and novels
Learning  Class discussions
Methods  Pair-work (in the practical sessions)
 Assignments (for the practical sessions)
6. Teaching and Learning Methods for students with Special Needs
To be suggested.
7. Assessment
A. Method ------------ Final written exam
B. Date Week 13 Set by the Faculty Council
C. Mark Distribution 5 15
-
8. Textbook and references

A. Notes --------------------
B. Textbooks Gray, Richard (2011). A History of American Literature. Malden:
Wiley-Blackwell.
C. References Müller, Timo (2017). Handbook of the American Novel of the
Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Boston: de Gruyter.
Moore, Michelle E. (2019). Chicago and the Making of American
Modernism: Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald in
Conflict. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic.
D. Periodicals, --------------------
Bulletins, etc.
Instructor: Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

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‫‪-‬‬
‫اللهم إني أسألك فهم النبيين‪ ،‬وحفظ المرسلين‪ ،‬والمالئكة المقربين‪ ،‬اللهم‬
‫اجعل ألسنتنا عامرة بذكرك‪ ،‬وقلوبنا عامرة بخشيتك‪ ،‬وأسرارنا عامرة‬
‫بطاعتك‪.‬‬
‫اللهم ارزقني قوة الحفظ وسرعة الفهم وصفاء الذهن‪ ،‬واكتب لي الخير كله‬
‫وارضيني به‪ ،‬وألهمني الصواب وجنبني الخطأ‪.‬‬
‫اللهم أخرجنا من ظلمات الوهم‪ ،‬وأكرمنا اللهم بنور الفهم‪ ،‬وافتح علينا بمعرفة‬
‫العلم‪ ،‬وحسن أخالقنا بالحلم‪ ،‬وسهل لنا أبـواب فضلك‪ ،‬وانشر علينـا‬
‫مـن خـزائن رحمتـك‪ ،‬يا أرحم الراحمين‪.‬‬
‫‪American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky‬‬

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American Literature in the 20th century
An Overview
Contents
Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------- 11
Chapter One: American Fiction and Prose in the 20th
century
1. What is Modern American Prose? ------------------------------- 15

2. Literary Trends in American Fiction and Prose in the
20th century -------------------------------------------------------------15
3. Harlem Renaissance or The New Negro Movement of
Afro-American Novelists or The U.S. Black Literature --- 26
 Alice Walker (1944 - ) ------------------------------------------------------ 29
 Toni Morrison (1930- 2019) ---------------------------------------------- 31
4. Jewish American Fiction ------------------------------------------- 32
5. The Beat Generation (1940s -1950s) ---------------------------- 36
6. Literature of Chinese-American Diaspora -------------------- 39
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 Pearl S. Buck (1892 -1973) ------------------------------------------------ 42
 Chin Yang Lee (1915 –2018) ---------------------------------------------- 46
 Amy Tan (1952 - ) ------------------------------------------------------------ 48
7. Indo-American Literature ------------------------------------------ 51
 Bharati Mukherjee (1940 –2017) ---------------------------------------- 53
 Jhumpa Lahiri (1967 - ) --------------------------------------------------- 55
 Kiran Desai (1971-) --------------------------------------------------------- 58
8. 20th Century Science Fiction in America --------------------- 66
 Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) ---------------------------------------------- 68
 Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988) ----------------------------------- 70
9. Fantasy American Literature in the 20th century ------------ 72
10. A List of Some American Novels in the 20th Century ---- 76
Chapter Two: American Drama in the 20th Century –- 79
1. Expansion and Rise of American Drama until 20th Century 79

2. Modernism in American Drama ---------------------------------- 82
3. Experimentalism in American drama -------------------------- 84
4. Expressionism in American drama ---------------------------- 85
5. Features of American Drama -------------------------------------- 87
6. Famous American Playwrights in the 20th C ----------------- 88
♣ Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) ------------------------------------ 89
♣ Maxwell Anderson (1888- 1959) ------------------------------ 91
♣ Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) --------------------------------- 94
♣ Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) ------------------------------ 97
♣ Arthur Miller (1915–2005) ---------------------------------------- 99
♣ Edward Albee (1928- 2015) ----------------------------------- 102
Chapter Three: American Poetry in the 20th C ------ 105

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1. Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------- 105
2. Traditionalism in American Poetry ---------------------------- 106
3. Idiosyncratic American Poets ---------------------------------- 109
4. Experimental American Poetry --------------------------------- 109
5. The Black Mountain School of American Poetry ---------- 111
6. The San Francisco School of American Poetry ----------- 113
7. The Beat Poets in America ---------------------------------------115
8. The New York School of American Poetry ----------------- 117
9. Surrealism and Existentialism in American Poetry ----- 119
10. Samples of the 20th Century American Poets ---------- 123
♣ 1. Robert Frost (1874-1963): “The Road Not taken”--- 124
♣ 2. Ezra Pound (1885-1972): “The Garden” ---------------- 140
♣ 3. Langston Hughes (1901-1967) “Let America Be ----------
- America Again” -------------------------------------------------- 149
♣ 4. Maya Angelou (1928-2014): “Phenomenal Woman” 162
♣ 5. Maya Angelou (1928-2014): “Woman Work” ---------189
Chapter Four: Don DeLillo’s White Noise --------- 207
1. Don DeLillo ------------------------------------------------------------ 208

2. Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------- 210
3. The Story of the Title ----------------------------------------------- 212
4. The Scientific Meaning of White Noise and Black Noise 215
5. The Plot of White Noise ------------------------------------------- 222
6. White Noise Synopsis and Summary ------------------------- 227
7. The Characters of White Noise --------------------------------- 242
8. The Major Themes of White Noise ---------------------------- 256
8.1. Fear of Death and "white noise" ------------------------- 256
8.2. Simulations Replacing Reality --------------------------- 258
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8.3. The Aura of Authority --------------------------------------- 260
8.4. Consumerism as Defense against Death ------------- 261
8.5. The Ambiguity of Identity ---------------------------------- 262
8.6. The World is a Network of Mysterious Systems --- 263
8.7. The Postmodern American Family ---------------------- 264
8.8. The Tension between Reality and Artifice ------------ 264
8.9. The Pervasiveness of Technology ---------------------- 266
9. The Setting of White Noise --------------------------------------- 267
10. Conflict in White Noise ------------------------------------------- 268
10.1. Conflict between man and his fear of death -------- 269
10.2. Jack's Psychological Conflicts ------------------------- 270
10.3 Jack's Conflict with Disease ------------------------------ 272
10.4. Conflict between Jack and Babette -------------------- 274
11. Aspects of Postmodern Identity in White Noise -------- 275
11.1. The Absence of a basic reality for Postmodern Man ------ 275
11.2. Television is a disturbing symbol for Postmodern Man --- 277
11.3. Destructive Technology: the yellow radiation of “airborne
toxic event” ------------------------------------------------------------- 279
11.4. Obscurity of once-fixed ideas about God, Truth, Right, and
Wrong ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 280
11.5. Death is not understood, and Nothing alleviates fear of Death
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 282
11.6. Death is the only thing to be certain in the novel ----------- 283
11.7. The Numerousness and Diversity of Information cause
Anxiety and insecurity ---------------------------------------------- 284
11.8. Search for Power in Postmodern World ----------------------- 286
11.9. Usage of Mysterious Drugs ---------------------------------------- 289
11.10. Religion no longer holds power of the Past ---------------- 290
11.11. Bewilderment is the major aspect of Postmodern Man -- 292
11.12. Nothing is worth believing in ------------------------------------ 293

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11.13. Postmodernism, both in reality and in literature, is nothing
if not ambiguous ----------------------------------------------------- 295
11.14. Don DeLillo's Themes are Postmodern ----------------------- 295
12. Motifs of White Noise -------------------------------------------- 296
13. Symbolism in White Noise ------------------------------------- 298
14. Protagonist, Antagonist, Climax and Mood ------------- 303
15. Important quotations in White Noise ------------------------ 304
16. The Crisis of American Identity in White Noise --------- 310
17. Hitler and Elvis: Issues of Race in White Noise -------- 333
 Bibliography --------------------------------------------- 341
American Literature in the 20th century

Introduction
The United States became an unprecedented global

power in the twentieth century, especially after World
War II. Like any field that began to develop in America,
so did American literature which witnessed the
emergence of several writers in all branches of
literature such as novel, drama and poetry. American
writers of the 20th century distinguished themselves
from well-established literary patterns, structures, and
norms through the use of fragmentation and alternative
narrative forms. The postmodernism of this era
emphasized self-consciousness and popular art, evident
in strategies such as the stream-of-consciousness
approach and biased or untrustworthy narrators. New
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perspectives in literature also emerged throughout the
20th century.
In the second decade of the twentieth century, especially
after world war the second, the number of American
writers increased. The nineteenth century’s ideas,
forms, and habits were discarded for vigorous
experimental work in fiction, poetry, and drama.
During the 1920s and after the First World War, many
writers were ready to consider themselves a “Lost
Generation” in the words of Gertrude Stein, whose
salon in Paris became the center for American literary
exiles. The 1930s were the years of the Great
Depression.
Modern American authors shared a common purpose,
which was to capture the essence of modern life. This
purpose is why most modernist literature was written in
a pessimistic way. Most modern works reflected the
thoughts and confusion of most Americans, especially
during the Great Depression and the two World Wars.
The chaotic literature revealed the instability of the
American people’s mindset as they attempted to
understand what was going on around them. There was
also a loss of faith and hope in the American people
during this time period and a collapse of morality and
values.

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The major literary themes of the Modernist Era are
confusion, isolation, and disillusionment. These themes
reflect the mindset of the American people and the
feelings that plagued them throughout the early 1900s.
It was because of this mindset and the loss of hope in the
American dream, that the major authors of the time
period such as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Eliot,
and Pound became known as the Lost Generation.
At the end of the 1940s and all over the 1950s, the Beat
Generation appeared as a literary movement. The
writers of this movement were known for their liberal
attitudes towards life. The Beat Movement or Beat
Generation were centered in the bohemian artist
communities of San Francisco’s North Beach, Los
Angeles’ Venice West, and New York City’s Greenwich
Village. The adherents of this movement expressed their
alienation from conventional society by adopting a style
of dress, manners, and vocabulary borrowed from jazz
musicians. They advocated personal release,
purification, and illumination through the heightened
sensory awareness that might be induced by drugs, jazz,
sex, or the disciplines of Zen Buddhism (a Japanese
school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of
meditation and intuition rather than ritual worship or
study of scriptures). ‫مدرسة يابانية للماهايانا البوذية تؤكد على قيمة‬
‫التأمل والحدس بدالً من طقوس العبادة أو دراسة الكتب المقدسة‬. The
Beats and their advocates found the joylessness and

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purposelessness of modern society sufficient
justification for both withdrawal and protest.
New immigrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America and
various parts of the world have added a large measure
of cultural diversity to the American population in 20 th
century. Therefore, American authors of ethnic
backgrounds emerged to write in various themes and
acquired the reader’s respect and consideration.
Ethnicity refers to one’s primary cultural setting: for
instance, black, Asian, white, Hispanic, or Jewish.
Ethnic literature shows readers the world through
various ethnics’ eyes.
United States today faces literary categorization as a
result of the emergence of migrated ethnic groups.
These ethnic groups produced literature that reflects
their interests, religious beliefs, racial, natural,
linguistics, or cultural heritage. The literary work
produced by members of each group is considered to be
ethnic literature. This writing usually includes their
distinctive language, their culture, and their beliefs.
In summary, in addition to the Native American
literature, there appeared other literatures. Asian
American literature is the body of literature produced
in the United States by writers of Asian descent.
African-American literature is the body of literature
produced in the United States by writers of African
descent. Chinese American literature is the body of
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literature produced in the United States by writers of
Chinese descent. American ethnic literature provides
knowledge on diverse cultures, provides varying
cultural perspectives within the literature, develops
critical thinking skills about these diverse cultural
perspectives, and, if nothing else, develops an
appreciation for the diversity that is America.
The Author
Radwan El-Sobky
Chapter One
American Fiction and Prose
in the 20th century
1. What is Modern American Prose?

Modern American prose is generally defined as novels,
short stories, and essays written in English by American
authors after the end of World War II. Authors of
modern American prose employ various styles and
literary techniques; however, prose remains separated

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from poetry because it follows grammatical patterns
found in speech and common language.
Modern American prose includes some of American
literature's best-known novels and essays, including
Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), To
Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee (1926-2016),
and Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison (1931-2019). In
the late 20th century, American prose continued to
diversify and included more African American, Latinx,
and Asian American writers.
2. Literary Trends in American Fiction and Prose
in the 20th century
♣ (1) Naturalism in 20th Century American Fiction
Naturalism is a literary movement that emphasizes
observation and the scientific method in the fictional
portrayal of reality. Naturalism is a literary movement
in which writers focused on exploring the fundamental
causes for their characters’ actions, choices, and
beliefs. These causes centered on the influence of family
and society upon the individual—and all the
complications that exist therein—resulting in a view
that environmental factors are the primary
determinant of human character. Naturalism is in
many ways interconnected with Realism, but realism is
primarily a style of writing, while naturalism is a
philosophy in writing.

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Novelists writing in the naturalist mode include Émile
Zola (its founder), Thomas Hardy, Theodore Dreiser,
Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris. The term
naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts
to apply scientific principles of objectivity and
detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike
realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism
implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers,
since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase,
"human beasts," characters can be studied through
their relationships to their surroundings.
Naturalism began as a branch of literary realism, and
realism had favored fact, logic, and impersonality over
the imaginative, symbolic, and supernatural. American
naturalist authors viewed their characters as
experiments; they exposed them to certain stimuli or
phenomena and recorded their reactions. The result
blends literature and science, mixing a writer’s gift for
character and description with a scientist’s detached
observations on proven or disproven hypotheses.
Although they considered themselves realists,
Naturalistic authors selected particular parts of reality:
misery, corruption, vice, disease, poverty, prostitution,
racism, and violence. They were criticized for being
pessimistic and for concentrating excessively on the
darker aspects of life.
Stephen Crane, the author of The Red Badge of
Courage and other works, employed a similar
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approach and contributed greatly to the canon of
American naturalism.
The novel would be an experiment where the author
could discover and analyze the forces, or scientific laws,
that influenced behavior, and these included emotion,
heredity, and environment. Other characteristics of
literary naturalism include: detachment, in which the
author maintains an impersonal tone and disinterested
point of view; determinism, the opposite of free will, in
which a character's fate has been decided, even
predetermined, by impersonal forces of nature beyond
human control; and a sense that the universe itself is
indifferent to human life.
Naturalistic writers believed that the laws behind the
forces that govern human lives might be studied and
understood. Naturalistic writers thus used a version of
the scientific method to write their novels; they studied
human beings governed by their instincts and passions
as well as the ways in which the characters’ lives were
governed by forces of heredity and environment.
 The Function of Naturalist Works
The function of naturalism is to present the world as it

is—without embellishment, idealization, or romance—
and illustrate the dominance of environmental
conditions in human life and on individual characters.

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This perspective allows the author to comment on the
darker sides of human nature.
Subjects like poverty, disease, racism, and prostitution
often make their way into literary naturalism. The
gritty vantage point on the human experience can
sometimes be bleak, but authors write this way in
service of a higher purpose. They aim to improve the
condition of the world by highlighting the dire,
uncontrollable circumstances with which everyday
people typically live.
 Elements of naturalist works
The major elements of naturalist works are

determinism, objectivity, pessimism, setting, and plot
twists.
A) Determinism
This is the philosophical belief that external causes are
responsible for all the events in an individual’s life.
Fate, nature, or heredity explain why a character’s
journey unfolds the way it does. Forces beyond one’s
will and control predetermine everything.
For example, in William Faulkner’s short story “A
Rose for Emily,” the central character’s insanity is a
foregone conclusion. It is a natural byproduct of the
oppressive control her father exerted over her, her
codependent relationship with him, and the self-
imposed isolation she maintained her entire life. It’s
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clear to the reader that there was never any hope for
Miss Emily—her fate was determined by her
circumstances.
B) Objectivity
Naturalist writers maintain an objectivity in their
storytelling. They detach themselves from the
emotional components of the story and serve more as
impartial observers of what transpires. When
discussing emotions at all, the focus is on primitive
emotions of survival, usually in a hostile world.
C) Pessimism
Authors of naturalist works typically possess a cynical
or fatalistic worldview, wherein they don’t see their
characters as having much power over their lives or
decisions. These writers view life as a glass-half-empty
prospect.
An example of this appears in Jack London’s classic
adventure novel The Call of the Wild, in which the
central character is a dog named Buck. “Thus, as token
of what a puppet thing life is,” London writes, “the
ancient song surged through him and he came into his
own again.” Calling life a “puppet thing” is a
pessimistic way of viewing the human—or animal—
experience.
D) Setting

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Naturalism puts great emphasis on the impact of
environment, so location tends to play a significant role
in these works. The setting often becomes a character
in and of itself.
This is the case in Frank Norris’s novel McTeague: A
Story of San Francisco. The downfall of the title
character and his wife plays out against a California
backdrop, from San Francisco to Death Valley, where
the shattered dreams of the gold-seeking miners reflect
the shattered dreams of the McTeagues.
E) Plot Twists
Many naturalist works include a plot twist or some type
of intense gut-punch at the end of the story. This
underscores the futility of the character’s struggle and
the fixed quality of their destiny. For instance, Kate
Chopin’s novel The Awakening ends with Edna
Pontellier drowning herself in the Gulf of Mexico after
rebelling against the societal role assigned to her.
♣ (2) Experimentation in Modernist American
- Literature
By the turn of the 20th century writers of prose as well
as poets and playwrights were keen on experimenting
with new techniques and topics. The rather idealistic
point of view authors had taken in the 19th century was
no longer up - to - date and especially after the First
World War another style of writing got popular.
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Perhaps it would be the best description to say that
realism got even more realistic.
The large cultural wave of Modernism expressed a sense
of modern life through art as a sharp break from the
past, as well as from Western civilization’s classical
traditions. Modern life seemed radically different from
traditional life – more scientific, faster, more
technological, and more mechanized. Modernism
embraced these changes.
Modernism is a movement in literature from 1914-
1945 that is characterized by a rejection of the
traditional forms of writing in favor of bold
experimentation in both poetry and prose.
Experimentation in Modernist literature employed a
number of different experimental writing techniques
that broke the conventional rules of storytelling. Some
of those techniques include blended imagery and
themes, Absurdism, nonlinear narratives, and stream of
consciousness—which is a free flowing inner
monologue. Ernest Hemingway e.g. had a very
realistic, straightforward style without the romantic
ornaments that had been used before. He got first
famous with his two anti - war novels: The Sun Also
Rises and A Farewell to Arms published in 1926 and
1929.

━ 22 ━
♣ (3) Rejecting emotional aspects of literature ---
-- and interest in the psychological depths
- of their characters
With the onset of Modernism, works of fiction no longer
ended in the conventional way where the hero wins the
day, the world is safe, and the audience has closure.
Instead, the audience is introduced to a new kind of
hero, one that carries with him the disillusionment and
fragmentation that characterizes the Modernist era.
American authors in general began to reject the
emotional aspects of literature more and more. Instead
they became fascinated with describing and analyzing
the psychological depths of their characters.
A technique authors used during this time period
was stream of consciousness. The stream of
consciousness technique was an unfiltered flow of
thought, usually written in first-person point of view.
The character often jumps from one thought to another
or delivers uninterrupted tangents. This writing style
reflected the fragmented social consciousness that
pervaded the time period due to the feeling of
disillusionment following World War I.
♣ (4) Rejecting the Puritan and Victorian -----
-- Values and Ideals
In the 1920s, American society and thus also the society
of American writers, started to reject the Puritan and

━ 23 ━
Victorian values and ideals that had been established.
Writers felt that now they had much more freedom in
choosing their topics - and also in choosing their way of
life. A good example for this is Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
On the one hand he was a brilliant author, who draw a
satiric portrait of the American upper class in This Side
of Paradise in 1920 and analyzed the American Dream
in The Great Gatsby in 1925. On the other hand he was
a severe alcoholic and lead a very eccentric and
sometimes immoral life.
In 1930 Sinclair Lewis was the first American to get the
Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel Bosworth.
Dodsworth tells the story of a young American couple
who moves to Europe. Dodsworth recounts their
reactions to Europeans and European values, their
various relationships with others, their estrangement,
and their brief reconciliation.
♣ (5) The Appearance of the Lost Generation in
- the 1920s and the Reassessment of Values
The Lost Generation is a group of American writers
who came of age during the First World War and
established their literary reputations in the 1920s. The
term is also used more generally to refer to the post-
World War I generation. The combination of
industrialization, urbanization, and WWI led people to
reassess the traditional values they had held for so long.

━ 24 ━
The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited
values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and
because of its spiritual alienation from the traditions of
the United States. The term was used to refer to the
generation of people who lost their youth in the war. The
term symbolically describes the people who were
inevitably changed by the war after encountering
suffering and disillusionment. Nourished with the
Victorian-based traditional values of patriotism,
religion, family, and morality in their homeland, youth
were completely shattered by the reality of war. They
strongly opposed post-war America. Their newly
formed cynical perspective on life destroyed the lost
promise of the American dream. Instead, they set out to
find some consolation in the aesthetic setting of Europe
and its loose lifestyle. The destruction of war led them
into a whole spectrum of escapist techniques, such as
alcoholism, partying, immorality. As the term suggests,
this generation felt unsettled, purposeless, and
directionless. The harshness of war left them
traumatized and disoriented - which provides
thoughtful inspiration to their novels.
Faith was another traditional value under fire. Those
who experienced the heinous brutality of WWI found it
difficult to have faith in a God that would allow such
widespread carnage. Society was searching for a way to
make sense of the horrors of WWI, and a spiritual
emptiness enveloped many Americans. Those who came

━ 25 ━
of age during wartime were dubbed “The Lost
Generation” because of their loss of innocence, loss of
faith in tradition and family, loss of purpose and drive,
and loss of faith in American ideals such as patriotism
and courage. The experiences of WWI left people
searching for answers to life’s big questions, but they
found none.
What they found instead was a need to live in the
moment. War taught the American people that life was
fleeting, so they chased after the present moment and
lived it to the fullest. This resulted in an era of wild
excess commonly referred to as “The Roaring
Twenties.” When spiritual emptiness pervaded the
people, they sought to fill the void with lavish parties,
high fashion, and illegal alcohol. The Roaring Twenties,
sometimes stylized as Roaring ‘20s, refers to the 1920s
decade in music and fashion.
The Lost Generation includes writers like Ernest
Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, E. E.
Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, and
many other writers who made Paris the centre of their
literary activities in the 1920s. All of these writers
included their despair and disappointment in
traditional values skillfully into their works. They were
never a literary school.
The most important author of the Lost Generation who
was even called the most important American author of
━ 26 ━
the 20th century was certainly Ernest Hemingway (1899
–1961). He took part in the First World War, where he
was severely wounded and about at that time his father
committed suicide. In the first period of his life
Hemingway wrote mainly anti- war novels, but other
topics followed soon. In the following years Hemingway
concentrated on Short Stories - something he got
especially famous for.
3. Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro
Movement of Afro-American Novelists or The
U.S. Black Literature
The second important literary movement of the early
20th century was the so called Harlem Renaissance. This
name describes the literary work of Afro-American
novelists, whose creative center was Harlem, New York.
Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-
1930s, the period is considered a golden age in
African American culture, manifesting in literature,
music, stage performance and art. One of the factors
contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance
was the migration of African Americans to northern
cities, such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington
D.C. between 1919 and 1926. The African Americans
were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and become
“The New Negro.”
This African American cultural movement became
known as “The New Negro Movement”, and later as
━ 27 ━
the “Harlem Renaissance.” These people wanted to
evoke a new kind of cultural self-confidence in their
black brothers and sisters spread all over the country
and to support the idea of the “New Negro”, a topic
which was described by Alain Le Roy, a sociologist, in
1925. African American writers affirmed the role of
black talent in American culture and focused on
different aspects of black life. They addressed issues of
race, class, religion and gender. Some writers focused
entirely on black characters, while others addressed
relationships among people of different races. Some
attacked racism, while others addressed issues within
black communities.
This movement included some prominent figure such
as: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee
Cullen, Louis Armstrong, Cotton Club, Paul Robeson,
Josephine Baker, Aaron Douglas, Marcus Garvey
African American literature is the body of literature
produced in the United States by writers of African
descent. African American writers have been
recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel
Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993. Among the
themes and issues explored in this literature are the role
of African Americans within the larger American
society, African-American culture, racism, slavery, and
social equality. Basically Afro - American authors still
write about the same subjects as their predecessors of
the Harlem Renaissance: the problems of black people
━ 28 ━
in American society. A famous Afro-American writer is
Toni Morrison, who wrote Beloved which was published
in 1987. Beloved is about a female slave, who tries to
escape with her children, but who fails and decides to
kill her kids, so that they don’t have to suffer under their
cruel owner. She only succeeds in killing her oldest
daughter, who haunts her as a ghost 20 years later. In
1993 Morrison was awarded with the Nobel Prize.
African-American literature has both been influenced
by the great African diasporic heritage and shaped it in
many countries. It has been created within the larger
realm of post-colonial literature, although scholars
distinguish between the two, saying that “African
American literature differs from most post-colonial
literature in that it is written by members of a minority
community who reside within a nation of vast wealth
and economic power.”
 Alice Walker (1944 - )

African American Novelist
Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer,
poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four
collections of short stories, four children’s books, and
volumes of essays and poetry. She won the Pulitzer
Prize in Fiction in 1983 and the National Book Award.

━ 29 ━
Alice Walker is an Afro American author achieved the
Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for her novel The Color Purple
(1982) out of which Stephen Spielberg made a very
successful film. She won the National Book Award for
Fiction in 1983 for her novel The Color Purple Alice
Malsenior Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in
Eatonton, Georgia, USA.
Walker’s career as a writer took flight with the
publication of her third novel, The Color Purple (1982).
Set in the early 1900s, the novel explores the female
African American experience through the life and
struggles of its narrator, Celie. Celie suffers terrible
abuse at the hands of her father, and later, from her
husband. The compelling work won Walker both the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award
for Fiction in 1983.
The novel shows the struggle of black women for sexual
and racial equality. But while the female characters in
the book get strong, creative individuals at last, the male
ones are described in a very negative way, for which she
has often been criticized. Nevertheless the book became
a bestseller and maybe it’s important to mention, that
The Color Purple seems especially realistic, because she
wrote it in the dialect of the black population of the
American South. Of course we cannot jugde from this
point which American authors of our days will be
known and important in the future.

━ 30 ━
Alice Walker’s Novels and short story collections
o The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)
o In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973,
includes "Everyday Use")
o Meridian (1976)
o The Color Purple (1982)
o You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories (1982)
o To Hell With Dying (1988)
o The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
o Finding the Green Stone (1991)
o Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)
o The Complete Stories (1994)
o By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998)
o The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000)
o Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004)
 Toni Morrison (1930- 2019)

African American Novelist
Toni Morrison, the Nobel laureate in literature whose
best-selling work explored black identity in America —
and in particular the often crushing experience of black
women — through luminous, incantatory prose

━ 31 ━
resembling that of no other writer in English, died on
Monday in the Bronx. She was 88.
Toni Morrison was born on February 18, 1931 in
Lorain, Ohio. Toni Morrison is one of the most
celebrated authors in the world. In addition to writing
plays, and children’s books, her novels have earned her
countless prestigious awards including the Pulitzer
Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from
President Barack Obama. As the first African-
American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature,
Morrison’s work has inspired a generation of writers to
follow in her footsteps.
In 1987, Morrison released her novel, Beloved which is
based on the true story of an African-American
enslaved woman. This book was a Bestseller for 25
weeks and won countless awards including the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction. In 1993, Morrison became the first
Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Morrison’s work continued to influence writers and
artists through her focus on African American life and
her commentary on race relations.
Toni Morrison’s Novels
o The Bluest Eye (1970)
o Sula (1973)
o Song of Solomon (1977)
o Tar Baby (1981)
━ 32 ━
o Beloved (1987)
o Jazz (1992)
o Paradise (1997)
o Love (2003)
o A Mercy (2008)
o Home (2012)
o God Help the Child (2015)
4. Jewish American Fiction

Jewish American literature holds an essential place in
the literary history of the United States. Jewish
American literature has chronicled and paralleled the
Jewish American experience. It depicts the struggles of
immigrant life, the stable yet alienated middle-class
existence that followed, and finally the unique
challenges of cultural acceptance: assimilation and the
reawakening of tradition.
There are many works of literature that depict the life
of the Jewish immigrant. The heroes of these works
tend to be young men or boys who are trying to establish
financial viability in the New World while fighting with
the demons of traditional Jewish life and family.
The major current of Jewish writing in America dates
only from World War II. Irving Howe once compared
the Jewish and the southern literary schools in a
provocative comment: “In both instances,” he said, “a
subculture finds its voice and its passion at exactly the

━ 33 ━
moment it approaches disintegration.” The early
Jewish-American works are not only
autobiographical; they also tend to be thesis novels,
declarations of faith as well as independence.
Gold's Jews Without Money (a 1930 semi-
autobiographical novel by American critic Mike Gold)
is a powerful analysis of immigrant life as a grim culture
of poverty.
The Post-War Generation: Saul Bellow, Bernard
Malamud, Delmore Schwartz, Grace Paley, Paul
Goodman, and their Yiddish cousin, Isaac Bashevis
Singer, were the first major Jewish writers in America
to sustain major careers, not as immigrant writers but
in the mainstream of American letters. Bernard
Malamud, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth are the masters
of Jewish American fiction. Among them they received
seven National Book Awards (including six in an 18-
year period), three Pulitzer Prizes (one each), and a
Nobel Prize (Bellow, 1976). Malamud, Bellow, and Roth
wrote about Jews rooted in America, who nonetheless
suffer from alienation.
Straightforward realism was never an option for
Jewish writers in America; it belonged to those who
knew their society from within, who had a bird's-eye
view, an easy grasp of its manners and values. Such a
realism produced minor novels attacking anti-
Semitism, like Arthur Miller’s Focus (1945) and Laura
Z. Hobson's Gentleman’s Agreement (1947); it
━ 34 ━
contributed to important war novels, among
them Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948)
and Irwin Shaw's The Young Lions (1948).
The atrocities of the Holocaust, the psychology
of Freud, and the dark vision of certain modern masters
encouraged Jewish writers to find some universal
significance in their own experience. Franz Kafka was
the prophet, not of totalitarianism—that was too
facile—but of a world cut loose from will and meaning,
the world as they experienced it in the 1940s. Saul
Bellow’s engagement with the themes of modernist
culture can be traced from novel to novel.
The early twentieth century saw the appearance of two
pioneering American Jewish novels: Abraham Cahan’s
The Rise of David Levinsky and Henry Roth’s Call it
Sleep. It reached some of its most mature expression in
the 20th century “Jewish American novels” by Saul
Bellow, J. D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Bernard
Malamud, Chaim Potok, and Philip Roth. Their work
explored the conflicting pulls between secular society
and Jewish tradition which were acutely felt by the
immigrants.
More recent authors like Nicole Krauss, Paul Auster,
Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, Alan
Kaufman, Lev Raphaeland Art Spiegelman have
continued to examine dilemmas of identity in their
work, turning their attention especially to the Holocaust
━ 35 ━
and the trends of both ongoing assimilation and cultural
rediscovery exhibited by younger generations of
American Jews. Arguably the most influential of all
American- Jewish novels was Leon Uris' 'Exodus'. Its
story of the struggle to create the modern state of Israel
translated into Russian became the inspiration for
hundreds of thousands of Russian immigrants to Israel.
Modern Jewish American novels often contain (a
few or many) Jewish characters and address issues and
themes of importance to Jewish American society such
as assimilation, Zionism/Israel, and antisemitism, along
with the recent phenomenon known as “New
antisemitism.”
Three Jewish-American writers have won the Nobel
Prize in Literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow,
and Joseph Brodsky. Magazines such as The New
Yorker have proved to be instrumental in exposing
many Jewish American writers to a wider reading
public.
5. The Beat Generation (1940s -1950s)

The Beat Generation was a literary subculture
movement started by a group of authors whose work
explored and influenced American culture and politics
in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was
published and popularized by Silent Generation in the
1950s, better known as Beatniks.

━ 36 ━
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (a Poem1956), William S.
Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (a Novel 1959), and Jack
Kerouac’s On the Road (a Novel 1957) are among the
best known examples of Beat literature. Both Howl and
Naked Lunch were the focus of obscenity trials that
ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United
States. The members of the Beat Generation developed
a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who
celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.
The Beat Generation emerged in San Francisco after
WWII, it was a movement that did away with the
formalism of traditional verse and ideology. The writers
in the beat movement not only rejected traditional
poetry, but they also rejected the capitalistic and
materialistic features of American life. Instead, the
group at the heart of this movement, known as The
Beat Generation, championed personal freedom and
the expression of free-flowing thoughts and ideas,
incorporating the use of drugs, new ideas about sex and
sexuality, and the experimental nature of jazz music
into their work.
What is the Beat Generation?
The Beat Generation did include some African
American and female writers but were generally a
white, middle- to upper-class, male crowd. This group
favored personal freedom and expression in their lives
and writing. As such, they rejected the Modernist
━ 37 ━
approach to writing, with its formal structures and ways
of composing written pieces, and instead embraced a
free-form style. By rejecting modernist forms and
structure, they hoped to make art more accessible to all
people, not just the wealthy and well-educated.
The “founders” of the Beat Generation met at Columbia
University in the early 1940s. Jack Kerouac and Allen
Ginsberg formed the core of this initial group, and they
would remain bulwarks of the Beat sensibility for years
to come. The Beat Generation was never a large
movement in terms of sheer numbers, but in influence
and cultural status they were more visible than any
other competing aesthetic. The Beat Generation was a
product of the question the rampant materialism of
their society.
Beat Writers
Among the most famous authors of this generation,
there were:
 Allen Ginsburg -- best known for his poem “Howl”
and the subsequent obscenity trial that followed its
publication, Ginsberg first become friends with other
members of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac and
William S. Burroughs, while studying at Columbia
University.
 Gary Snyder -- known for bringing an appreciation
and understanding of the natural world and its
━ 38 ━
beauty to the Beat Movement, which was brought
about by his practice of Zen Buddhism.
 Gregory Corso -- after a series of odd jobs and a few
stints in jail, Corso met Ginsberg in 1950 and was
introduced to poetry beyond the classics, inspiring
him to write in a more experimental style.
 Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- published many works by
Beat Poets through his publishing house/bookshop
City Lights, including Ginsberg's “Howl” for which
he was arrested, and then acquitted, on charges of
obscenity.
 Jack Kerouac--the first to call them “beat,” as in
“feeling beat down,” he coined the term “Beat
Movement” and was by far one of their most famous
members. Kerouac is known more for his books and
style of prose than his poetry.
6. Literature of Chinese-American Diaspora
Chinese American literature is literature written in
English by people of Chinese descent who live in the
United States. The genre began in the 19th century and
flowered in the 20th with such authors as Sui Sin Far,
Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan.
Chinese American literature has come to occupy an
important place in the American literary landscape.
Chinese American literature written in the 20th century
is written almost exclusively in English. Chinese
━ 39 ━
American authors became more prolific and accepted
after the lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United
States in the early 19th century. Certain Chinese
provinces experienced extreme weather, including
severe flooding, which led to widespread famine and
prompted individuals to migrate. Most Chinese
immigrants settled on the West coast, primarily in
California.
20th-century Chinese American literature
The start of the 20th century saw some of the first
English-language works by Chinese American authors.
These included the autobiography My Life in China and
America (1909) by Yung Wing (1828-1912), the first
Chinese American to graduate from Yale University,
and Lin Yutang (1895-1976), who wrote about Chinese
philosophy and culture for a western audience in My
Country and My People (1935), and The Importance of
Living (1937).
In the late 20th and 21st centuries, Chinese American
authors became an important part of American
literature. Writers such as David Henry Hwang (1957-
present), Amy Tan (1952-present), and Gish Jen (1955-
present) have won a variety of prestigious literary
awards and are read throughout the country and
around the world.

━ 40 ━
The Importance of Chinese American Literature
Chinese American literature forms an important part of
American literature as it exposes and communicates the
experiences of Chinese American people. It helps to
define the United States as a multicultural, multiethnic
country and dismantle the stereotype of an Anglo-
centered American literature.
Chinese American literature is also a way for the
Chinese American community to affirm and build a
shared identity.
Today, Chinese American literature is a key part of the
American literary landscape, and Chinese American
authors have written literary works considered essential
to American literature.
The Characteristics of Chinese American Literature
Many works of Chinese American literature explore
themes of migration, assimilation, and the formation of
Chinese American identity. Authors often juxtapose the
very different Eastern and Western cultures of China
and the United States and expand on the difficulties that
this culture change causes for Chinese Americans.
Many texts touch on the racism Chinese Americans face
in Western culture and the stereotype of the “model
minority,” which assumes that all Asian people excel in
subjects such as math and science. Chinese American
literature frequently explores the breakdown of these
━ 41 ━
traditions and the conflicts that arise, particularly
within families, when traditional values are tested
against the more liberal culture of the United States.
The Themes in Chinese American Literature
Some key themes in Chinese American literature
include assimilation, tradition versus modernity, and
changes between consecutive generations.
A) Assimilation
Assimilation is often a key theme in Chinese American
literature as immigrants try to fit into American
culture. One of Chinese American literature’s best-
known works, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989),
deals with the theme of assimilation as she follows the
stories of the mothers and daughters of four Chinese
immigrant families.
The mothers of the Joy Luck Club continue to cling to
their traditional beliefs and practices while their
daughters become more and more American. They
speak in English, which their mothers can barely
understand, and date American men. The daughters’
assimilation makes it difficult for the family members to
relate to one another and sometimes creates conflicts
between the mothers and daughters.

━ 42 ━
B) Tradition versus Modernity
Another theme frequently appearing in Chinese
American literature is the juxtaposition of tradition and
modernity.
C) Changes between Generations
Similar to the themes of assimilation and tradition
versus modernity, many works of Chinese American
literature deal with the generational divide that often
grows in Chinese American families.
 Pearl S. Buck (1892 -1973):

Chinese American Novelist
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (1892–1973) was an
American writer and novelist. Her classic novel The
Good Earth (1931) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and
William Dean Howells Medal. In 1938, Buck won the
Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic
descriptions of peasant life in China" and for her
“masterpieces”, two memoir-biographies of her
missionary parents. She was the first American woman
to win that prize.

━ 43 ━
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born on June 26,
1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents, Absalom
and Caroline Sydenstricker, were Southern
Presbyterian missionaries, stationed in China. Pearl
was the fourth of seven children (and one of only
three who would survive to adulthood). She was born
when her parents were near the end of a furlough in the
United States; when she was three months old, she was
taken back to China, where she spent most of the first
forty years of her life.
From childhood, Pearl spoke both English and Chinese.
Pearl graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s
College in Lynchburg, Virginia. From 1914 to 1932,
━ 44 ━
after marrying John Lossing Buck, she served as a
Presbyterian missionary. In 1935, she married the
publisher Richard J. Walsh and continued writing
prolifically. She became an activist and prominent
advocate of the rights of women and racial equality, and
wrote widely on Chinese and Asian cultures, becoming
particularly well known for her efforts on behalf of
Asian and mixed-race adoption. Pearl Buck died in
March, 1973, just two months before her eighty-first
birthday. She is buried at Green Hills Farm.
Pearl S. Buck’s Novels
Pearl wrote 43 novels. The following are selections from
her novels:
1. East Wind: West Wind (1930)
2. The Good Earth (1931); The House of Earth trilogy #1
3. Sons (1933); The House of Earth trilogy #2
4. A House Divided (1935); The House of Earth trilogy #3
5. The House of Earth (trilogy) (1935) – includes: The Good Earth,
Sons, A House Divided
6. All Men Are Brothers (1933)
7. China Sky (1941) – China trilogy #1
8. China Gold: A Novel of War-torn China (1942) – China trilogy #2.
9. The Promise (1943)
10. China Flight (19453) – China trilogy #3.
11. Portrait of a Marriage (1945)
12. Pavilion of Women (1946)
13. The Angry Wife (1947)
14. The Long Love (1949)
15. God's Men (1951)

━ 45 ━
16. Come, My Beloved (1953)
17. Voices in the House (1953)
18. Satan Never Sleeps (1962)
19. Death in the Castle (, 1965)
20. The Time Is Noon (1966)
21. The New Year (1968)
22. The Goddess Abides (1972)
23. All under Heaven (1973)
24. The Rainbow (1974)
25. The Eternal Wonder (2013)
Pearl S. Buck’s short stories

Pearl wrote about 168 short stories. The following
are selections of these stories:
1. "The First Wife" (1931)
2. "The Refugees" (1933)
3. "The Crusade" (1936)
4. "Strangers Are Kind" (1936)
5. "The Woman Who Was Changed" (1937)
6. "Stay as You Are" (1940)
7. "There Was No Peace" (1940)
8. "Answer to Life" (novella; 1941)
9. "More Than a Woman" (1941) – originally titled "Deny It if You
Can"
10. "Our Daily Bread" (1941)
11. "Journey for Life" (1944) – originally titled "Spark of Life"
12. "Death and the Spring" (1953)
13. "The Three Daughters" (1953)
14. "The Shield of Love" (1954)
15. "Death and the Dawn" (1956)
16. "The Secret" (1958)

━ 46 ━
17. "Heart of a Man" (1959)
18. "The Beauty" (1961)
19. "A Field of Rice" (1962)
20. "A Court of Love" (1963)
21. "Escape at Midnight" (1963)
22. "Night Nurse" (1963)
23. "A Certain Wisdom" (1967)
24. "Secrets of the Heart" (1968)
25. "Dagger in the Dark" (1969)
26. "The Christmas Secret" (1972)
27. "The Miracle Child" (1973)
28. "The Kiss" (1977)
29. "The Lovers" (1977)
30. "Miranda" (1977)
Chin Yang Lee (1915 –2018)

Chin Yang Lee was a Chinese American author best
known for his 1957 novel The Flower Drum Song, which
inspired the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower
Drum Song and the eponymous 1961 film which was
nominated for five Academy Awards.
Chin Yang Lee wrote a novel about Chinatown, The
Flower Drum Song (1957) (originally titled Grant
Avenue). The novel, about generational conflict within
an Asian American family over an arranged marriage
in San Francisco's Chinatown, was adapted into the
Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song,
opening in 1958. The original production was the first
━ 47 ━
Broadway show to feature Asian American players. The
1961 film jump-started the careers of the first
generation of Asian American actors, including Nancy
Kwan, James Shigeta, and Jack Soo. Lee was
interviewed on the 2006 DVD release of the movie.
 Chin Yang Lee

Chin Yang Lee’s Novels
1. The Flower Drum Song (1957)
2. Lover's Point (1958)
3. The Sawbwa and His Secretary (1959)
4. Cripple Mah and the New Order (1961)
5. The Virgin Market (1964)
6. The Land of the Golden Mountain (1967)
7. The Days of the Tong Wars (1974)
8. The Second Son of Heaven (1990),
9. Gate of Rage: A Novel of One Family Trapped by the Events at
Tiananmen Square (1991)

━ 48 ━
 Amy Tan (1952 - )
Amy Tan, in full Amy Ruth Tan, (born February 19,
1952, Oakland, California, U.S.), American author of
novels about Chinese American women and the
immigrant experience. She is the daughter of John and
Daisy Tan, who came to America from China in the late
1940s. Besides Amy, the Tans also had two sons —
Peter, born in 1950, and John, born in 1954.
Amy Tan
Tan grew up in California and in Switzerland and
studied English and linguistics at San Jose State
University (B.A., 1973; M.A., 1974) and the University
of California, Berkeley. She was a highly successful
freelance business writer in 1987 when she took her
Chinese immigrant mother to revisit China. There Tan,

━ 49 ━
for the first time, met two of her half sisters, a journey
and a meeting that inspired part of her first novel, The
Joy Luck Club (1989; film 1993). The novel relates the
experiences of four Chinese mothers, their Chinese
American daughters, and the struggles of the two
disparate cultures and generations to relate to each
other.
Young Amy was deeply unhappy with her Asian
appearance and heritage. She was the only Chinese girl
in class from the third grade until she graduated from
high school. She remembers trying to belong and feeling
frustrated and isolated. "I felt ashamed of being
different and ashamed of feeling that way," she
remarked in a Los Angeles Times interview.
Her second novel, The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), was
inspired by her mother’s history; it concerns a Chinese
mother who accepts American ways clumsily and her
relationship to her thoroughly Americanized daughter.
In The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), an American
woman gradually learns to appreciate her Chinese half
sister and the knowledge she imparts. Tan again
explored the complex relationships of mothers and
daughters in The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001), in which
a woman cares for her mother, who is afflicted with
Alzheimer disease. In Saving Fish from Drowning
(2005), an idiosyncratic San Francisco art dealer
narrates the story of a group of tourists traveling
through China and Myanmar (Burma). The Valley of
━ 50 ━
Amazement (2013) told the stories of an American
woman, who opens a high-class brothel in Shanghai,
and her daughter, who is trained as a courtesan. An
excerpt from the novel had been published in 2011 as
the e-book Rules for Virgins.
Tan also published the collection of essays The Opposite
of Fate: A Book of Musings (2003) and the children’s
stories The Moon Lady (1992) and The Chinese Siamese
Cat (1994; adapted as a television series in 2001). Where
the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir was published in
2017.
Amy Tan’s Novels

1. The Joy Luck Club (1989)
2. The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)
3. The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)
4. The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001)
5. Saving Fish from Drowning (2005)
6. The Valley of Amazement (2013)
7. Indo-American Literature
Indian American literature is among the very ‘young’
literature in the United States, hardly forty years old.
Although Indians have been in the America in small
numbers since the 17th century thanks to the East India

━ 51 ━
Trading Company, it wasn’t until the late 20th century
when we began immigrating in significant numbers.
The reality is that the Indian American experience by
large is an immigrant experience. The Indian literature
by default addresses our pending concerns: the
immigrant experience, identity, racism, and othering.
7.1. Indian American Memoir Writers

Writing by immigrants from the Indian sub-continent is
associated with personal and communal identity,
memories of the homeland, and the active response to
this ‘new’ world. Writers express their personal,
familial identities and sociopolitical contexts, explaining
how and why they come to be where they are and to
write what they do. Example books about the Indian-
American immigrant experience:
♣Here We Are: American Dreams, American

Nightmares by Aarti Shahani (Memoir)
A true story of an Indian family’s immigration from
Morocco to the U.S. in the 1980s, this memoir chronicles
the story of that family’s struggle to make ends meet in
New York, as told through a daughter’s eyes. At first,
Aarti’s father can only find work shoveling snow on the
sidewalks near Broadway, but then their fortunes seem
to shift as Aarti’s father opens a watch shop and Aarti
wins a scholarship to attend a prestigious Manhattan
high school. However, after Aarti’s father is arrested,
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she takes on her father’s defense. What follows is an
unforgettable tale of an immigrant’s experience in the
U.S. justice system.
♣You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins (YA

Novel)
Mitali Bose Perkins is an Indian American writer of
children's and young adult literature. Mitali was born
in Kolkata, India and moved to the United States when
she was seven Mitali Perkins earned a BA in Political
Science at Stanford University and a Masters of Public
Policy at UC Berkley.
Mitali Bose Perkins’ Novels
 Rickshaw Girl (2007)
 Bamboo People (2010)
 You Bring the Distant Near (2017)
 Forward Me Back to You (2019)
 Between Us and Abuela (2019)
You Bring the Distant Near is based on the author’s own
life. Perkins’ novel gives voice to different voices within
a single family, who each retell the decades-long saga of
the family’s move to the U.S. and the challenges of living
here from the unique perspective of each generation of
women. Readers will feel the tug of honoring the culture
of one’s grandparents and ancestors while seeking to
embrace the new culture, one of the most common

━ 53 ━
struggles for immigrants. This is a relatable, coming-of-
age tale about discovering individual identity within a
family and a country.
7.2. Indian American Novelists and Short-

Story Writers
♣ Bharati Mukherjee (1940 –2017)

Indian American Novelist
Bharati Mukherjee was born on July 27, 1940, in
Calcutta, where her father, Sudhir Lal Mukherjee, ran
a successful pharmaceutical company. Bharati
Mukherjee was an Indian American-Canadian writer
and professor emerita in the department of English at
the University of California, Berkeley. She was the
author of a number of novels and short story collections,
as well as works of nonfiction.
Bharti Mukherjee is one of the prominent expatriate
writers who reject the tradition-bound society of the
East as she reaches out for the more empowering and
individualistic society of the West. Her novel ‘The
Tiger’s Daughter’ depicts a young women’s unsettling
return home to Calcutta after years abroad. The wife is
about the desolation of an immigrant woman of middle-
class Bengali origin devoid of her support structure in a
foreign society.

━ 54 ━
Bharti Mukherjee
In “The Middleman and Other Stories” (1988), which
won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction,
Ms. Mukherjee served up the immigrant experience in
all its rich variety, told through the voices of newcomers
from the Caribbean, the Middle East, the Philippines
and Sri Lanka, all of them both daunted and intoxicated
by the strange possibilities of life in the United States.
Mukherjee’s work features not only cultural clashes but
undercurrents of violence. Her first novel, The Tiger’s
Daughter (1972), tells of a sheltered Indian woman
shocked by her immersion in American culture and, on
her return to India, by a changed Calcutta. Wife (1975)
details an Indian woman’s descent into madness as she
━ 55 ━
is pulled apart by the demands of the cultures of her
homeland and her new home in New York City. In
Mukherjee’s first book of short fiction, Darkness (1985),
many of the stories, including the acclaimed “The
World According to Hsü,” are not only indictments of
Canadian racism and traditional Indian views of women
but also sharp studies of the edgy inner lives of her
characters. Darkness portrays the despair produced by
the encounter with Canadian racism. The Middleman,
and Other Stories (1988) centers on immigrants in the
United States who are from developing countries, which
is also the subject of two later novels. Her ‘Middleman
and Another Stories’ reveals immigrant experience in
US and Canada in ironic vein. Jasmine (1989) and The
Holder of the World (1993).
♣ Jhumpa Lahiri (1967 - )

Jhumpa is an American author known for her short
stories, novels and essays in English, and, more recently,
in Italian. Lahiri was born to Bengali parents from
Calcutta (now Kolkata)—her father a university
librarian and her mother a schoolteacher—who moved
to London and then to the United States, settling in
South Kingstown, Rhode Island, when she was young.
Her parents nevertheless remained committed to their
East Indian culture and determined to rear their

━ 56 ━
children with experience of and pride in their cultural
heritage.
 Jhumpa Lahiri
Lahiri is the author of four works of fiction: Interpreter
of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed
Earth, and The Lowland; and a work of nonfiction, In
Other Words. She has received numerous awards,
including the Pulitzer Prize; the PEN/Hemingway
Award; the PEN/Malamud Award; the Frank
O’Connor International Short Story Award; the
Premio Gregor von Rezzori; the DSC Prize for South
Asian Literature; a 2014 National Humanities Medal,
awarded by President Barack Obama; and the Premio
Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia, for In altre parole.

━ 57 ━
Her debut collection of short-stories Interpreter of
Maladies (1999) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and
the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The
Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of
the same name.
The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a
Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was made
into a major motion picture. Unaccustomed Earth (2008)
won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story
Award, while her second novel, The Lowland (2013), was
a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the
National Book Award for Fiction. On January 22, 2015,
Lahiri won the US$ 50,000 DSC Prize for Literature for
The Lowland. In these works, Lahiri explored the
Indian-immigrant experience in America.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novels
 The Namesake (2003)
 The Lowland (2013)
 Dove mi trovo (in Italian) (2018)
 Whereabouts (2021)
♣ Kiran Desai (1971- )

━ 58 ━
Kiran Desai is the daughter of novelist Anita Desai.
Kiran was born in Delhi, then spent the early years of
her life in Punjab and Mumbai. She left India at 14, and
she and her mother lived in England for a year before
moving to the United States. Kiran Desai studied
creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins
University, and Columbia University.
Kiran Desai (1971) is an Indian author. Her novel The
Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize. and
the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. In
January 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of
20 “most influential” global Indian women.
 Kiran Desai
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is a novel by Kiran
Desai published in 1998. It is her first book and won the
top prize for the Betty Trask Awards in 1998. It is set in
━ 59 ━
the Indian village of Shahkot (state of Punjab) and
follows the exploits of a young man, Sampath Chawla,
trying to avoid the responsibilities of adult life.
Kiran Desai based this book on a real-life story in
which a man, Kapila Pradhan lived up a tree for 15
years. This was the author’s inspiration for the book
and there are similarities between the novel and
Pradhan's life in his tree.
The Inheritance of Loss is the second novel by Indian
author Kiran Desai. It was first published in 2006. It
won a number of awards, including the Booker Prize for
that year, the National Book Critics Circle Fiction
Award in 2007, and the 2006 Vodafone Crossword Book
Award.
The Inheritance of Loss won the Booker Prize in
2006. It received glowing reviews from a several
publications and other authors, including being well
regarded by other Booker Prize winners, namely
Salman Rushdie and Marlon James. My impression
though, is that regular readers were less enthusiastic
about the novel and its win.
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai explores
burdensome themes of cultural and national identity
and the immigrant experience, but does so with an easy
technique that makes for effortless reading. Winner of
the 2006 Booker Prize, its relevance has only grown over

━ 60 ━
the years. Among its main themes are migration, living
between two worlds, and between past and present.
The Inheritance of Loss: An Overview

Three people live together in an old mansion in the far
north of India near the border with Nepal. Overlooked
by Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain,
their home is falling apart; the store-room floor has
collapsed, the walls have become swollen with moisture
and there is no water in the tanks to flush the toilets.
The owner of the house is a retired Judge, Justice
Jemubhai Patel. His father had run a successful
business procuring false witnesses for court cases. When
Jemu’s intelligence becomes apparent at school, his
education is given priority. Both father and son dream
of his entering the Civil Service, of gaming the judicial
system from above and below. But unable to afford a
university education in England, his father seeks a bride
for his son with a dowry large enough to fund it. In 1939,
aged twenty and just a month married to a fourteen-
year-old wife, he made the long journey from India to
Cambridge to study.
His time in England seems to have been transformative.
Acutely aware of his foreignness, mocked for his accent,
he stays isolated and retreats into himself, apparently
feeling a profound shame at his difference. But with a
friend’s help, he discovers England and Englishness.

━ 61 ━
When he returns to India his new tone is proud and
superior. As he rises through the ranks of the justice
system, he enjoys the power he holds over the social
classes that once kept his family down and the new
opportunities left by the departing British. In his
retirement, he remains cantankerous and oblivious to
the decay around him.
Sai has been living in the house for nine years and it has
probably become the only home she has known. Her
father, a pilot, was recruited from the Indian Air Force
for the Intercosmos Program during the period of
friendship between the Indian and Soviet governments.
Sai’s parents put her in a convent, aged six, when they
moved to Russia where they died two years later in an
accident, leaving Sai an orphan. On her parent’s death,
the convent sent Sai to live with her grandfather, the
Judge. Now seventeen-years old, Sai is slowly falling in
love with her tutor, Gyan, an ethnic Nepali.
The cook is the only one of the Judge’s servants who has
stood by him. As a young man lacking experience, his
father had to cajole the Judge into hiring him. At the
time, it was seen as a step down; previous generations of
his family had served only white men. Now, many years
since, the cook feels compelled to invent stories of the
Judge’s former grandeur so as to not feel ashamed
around the other servants in town. A widower for
seventeen years now, he sells homebrew on the side to

━ 62 ━
supplement his meagre income and to support his son,
Biju, now living in New York.
Biju’s life in New York is not the romantic dream of
opportunity his father imagines it to be. Selling hot dogs,
Biju has to find a new job when his manager has to do a
Green Card check. It will probably mean moving on to
yet another low paid food service job. The restaurants
of New York serve fine American and European food
prepared by a largely immigrant kitchen crew, many of
whom are South Asian and there illegally.
Biju’s life in New York is littered with moments that
may cause him to pause, reflect and wonder just what
he is doing there – his revulsion for the Dominican
prostitutes, a fight with a Pakistani co-worker that costs
both of them their jobs, the humiliation of delivering
Chinese food to rich Indian girls in New York to study.
But the diversity of the Asian immigrants he encounters,
and the requirements of his work, also force him to re-
examine the preconceptions he has around religion,
nationality and identity.
Before long, he finds himself yearning for India. But it
may not be an India he remembers. In the region where
his father is also an underpaid, unrespected, food
worker, there is a growing insurgency gathering arms.
India’s Prime Minister was assassinated the year before
and there is a feeling the country is being torn apart.

━ 63 ━
With a cantankerous old judge, his loyal cook and his
estranged granddaughter, hardly speaking to each
other, their pasts unknown to the reader; living in a
dilapidated mansion in the Himalayan foothills of
Northern India, as the main setting; The Inheritance of
Loss opens with the haunting feel of an
Indian Wuthering Heights. The style of the writing
in The Inheritance of Loss is difficult to describe and a
little enigmatic. The writing is teeming with tiny details,
observations and anecdotes that conjure an intimate
knowledge and give it the ring of truth. Though it
contains moments of humour, its best moments are the
sad ones that readers, especially those who have their
own experiences of its themes, will empathize with. And,
though its themes are complex, without easy solution for
those who appreciate them, Desai engages with them in
short segments within short chapters that make for an
easy-to-read book containing burdensome ideas.
It is as if, rather than plunging a knife and rapidly
exposing the bloody insides in a shocking and graphic
way, Desai has achieved the same exposure of unsettling
themes with the rapid application of light scratches. You
think it is only the surface until you see it has all come
away.
Those insoluble themes, to put them too simply, are of
cultural identity and the immigrant experience. The
judge, for example, experiences intense shame for his
identity in England which spurs him to become
━ 64 ━
Westernised and returns to India rather superior about
it. Yet, it is difficult to say why this transformation
should have occurred. Rather than the result of
experience of ill-treatment, the judge’s shame mostly
seems to be an internal manifestation inspired by his
own insecurities.
Much has changed in the West by the time Biju
experiences it. Although now much more of a melting
pot, unlike the Judge’s immigrant experience, Biju does
not seem to have any opportunity to assimilate and
become Western, though it is unclear whether he would
take such an opportunity. Nor does he seem to desire
any affinity with the other Asian immigrants he knows
and works with, some of whom do take the
opportunities towards assimilation and citizenship.
Instead, Biju’s experiences not only make him yearn for
his homeland but also inspire a desire to refine and
clarify the kind of Indian he sees himself as being.
Also searching for cultural ‘purity’ is Gyan. Though his
family came to India from Nepal generations ago, Gyan
begins to wonder if true equality is ever really on offer
for him, or whether he and his family will always be
treated as outsiders in India. Inspired by the recent
insurgency, Gyan wants to turn around his family’s
unrequited quest for acceptance and embrace his
ancestral ethnicity. Through Gyan and other
characters, The Inheritance of Loss draws connections

━ 65 ━
between the experiences of Indian immigrants in the
West and immigrants to India, over a century.
But these individual characters and the experiences that
challenge and inform their sense of identity are small
participants in a much larger question posed by the
novel – who is an ‘Indian’? While many modern
nations, especially European ones, can be said to
represent terrestrial boundaries enclosing a people who
largely share a common language, history, culture,
religion or ethnicity, albeit determined only after
centuries of nearly constant war and one that is
continually evolving; the modern Indian state, it could
be argued, lies at another extreme of a territory whose
boundaries contain an enormous level of diversity
impossible to reduce to a unifying definition. Repeated
failures to decide on a national language, of an all-
inclusive definition of Hinduism, as well as sporadic
threats of regional secession; are but small indicators of
a large and bewildering question.
While through much of The Inheritance of Loss, the
reader learns the past stories of the characters and how
they came to be together, it should not be forgotten
where they are. The experience of leaving India forced
both the judge and Biju to confront their sense of
identity in a way they never questioned when in India,
but did they really need to leave the country to have that
experience? The Himalayan foothills where the judge
now lives is a landscape, a climate and a culture not
━ 66 ━
easily recognizable as what most people think of as
‘Indian’, nor are the ethnicities that populate it. There,
the characters are also in the midst of an armed
insurgency whose recruits are fighting with the aim of
realizing their own country. The Judge and Biju’s
experiences outside of India made them consider their
identity and what it meant to them for the first time but
perhaps only in terms of non-Indians and a foreign
environment. For the Judge and Biju, the question of
who is an Indian is perhaps less confronting but more
uncertain within India. But from Gyan’s perspective,
there must be an answer to the question since it appears
to exclude him. The elusiveness of the answer is moot.
8. 20th Century Science Fiction in America

The first Golden Age of Science Fiction in America
American science fiction is now being researched in
light of the great changes in the modern world and in
the fictional worlds of the future which have the direct
effect on the treatment of the genre The main purpose
of science fiction is not just to popularize science, but to
promote it by using artistic means, to influence feelings
and imagination of a reader. The main purpose of
science fiction, in its classic form, is to promote
contemporary scientific knowledge and illustrations of
the future development of science and technology.

━ 67 ━
The first Golden Age of Science Fiction, often
recognized in the United States as the period from 1938
to 1946, was an era during which the Science
Fiction genre gained wide public attention and many
classic science fiction stories were published.
The history of Science - Fiction started already in
the 1920s but it reached the peak of its popularity in
the 1950s and 1960s. Science Fiction offers readers
opportunities to explore the possibilities of the universe,
often through time and space. Science Fiction is all
about speculative science imagining future
technological advances, often portraying space and time
travel, alien invasions, major environmental or societal
disruptions.
Three of the best-selling science fiction novelists of the
20th century, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and
Arthur C. Clarke are commonly referred to as the “Big
Three” of science fiction for their influential work in
expanding the definition of the genre established by
their predecessors Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Hugo
Gernsback. The most famous Science
Fiction writers in America are: Ray Bradbury (1920-
2012), Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988), Kurt
Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007) Isaac Asimov (1920–1992),
Alfred Bester (1913–1987), James Blish (1921–1975),
Nelson S. Bond (1908–2006), Leigh Brackett (1915–
1978), and Fredric Brown (1906–1972).

━ 68 ━
✿ Isaac Asimov (1920–1992):
American Writer of Science Fiction
Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of
biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime,
Asimov was considered one of the “Big Three” science
fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and
Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited
more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000
letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science
fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well
as much nonfiction.
 Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov emigrated with his family from Russia to
the United States and became a biochemistry professor
while pursuing writing. A professor of biochemistry at
━ 69 ━
Boston University, Isaac Asimov was a prolific writer.
He wrote and edited more than 500 books, his most
famous work being the Foundation series. Originally a
series of eight short stories published in Astounding
Magazine between May 1942 and January 1950. They
are based on the concepts set forth in Edward Gibbon’s
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The stories take place in the waning days of a future
Galactic Empire where mathematician Hari Seldon
develops a theory of psychohistory, a new and effective
mathematical sociology that can predict the future of
large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of
the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way,
and a dark age lasting 30,000 years before a second
empire arises. The first three books in the series, now
referred to as The Foundation Trilogy won the one-time
Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966.
Isaac Asimov’s other major series include the Galactic
empire and Robot series. The first book in the Galactic
Empire Series, The Stars Like Dust was described by
The New York Times as “…a rousing adventure story
of the remote future, is the Galaxy, which, with its
hundreds of inhabited planets, has been taken over by a
dictatorial race called, appropriately enough, the
Tyranni. A small group of rebels wage a determined
battle against the dictators, giving Mr. Asimov plenty of
opportunities to plot those involved and subtle twists for
which he is known. It is clear writing and excellent

━ 70 ━
suspense make this book a welcome addition to the
science fiction lists.”
The first book in the Robot series, I, Robot includes a
collection of short stories of robots gone mad, mind-
reading robots, robots with a sense of humor, robot
politicians, and robots who secretly run the world, all
told with Asimov’s trademark dramatic blend of science
fact and science fiction. It includes “The Evitable
Conflict” in which machines that have made the world
of the twenty-first century an economic utopia take
control of Mankind’s future, moving it “toward an
unknown and happy destiny” (Berger, Science Fiction
and the New Dark Age).
♣ Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988)

American Writer of Science Fiction
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction
writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction
writers", he was one of the most popular, influential,
and controversial authors of the genre. He set a high
standard for science and engineering plausibility and
helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality.
Aeronautical engineer and retired naval officer Robert
Anson Heinlein was one of the first writers of science
fiction to emphasize the importance of scientific
accuracy in the genre, and was thus a pioneer of the
subgenre of hard science fiction.
━ 71 ━
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was one of the first science
fiction writers to break into mainstream magazines such
as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s and four
of his novels won Hugo Awards. Named by the Library
of Congress as one of the 88 “Books the Shaped
America” and widely considered Heinlein’s
masterpiece, Stranger In A Strange Land tells the story
of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to
Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet
Mars and raised by Martians, and explores his
interaction with and eventual transformation of Terran
culture. “It reached large audiences farther away from
his science fiction roots than anything else [Heinlein]
wrote, and inspired insurgencies both right and left”
(Anatomy of Wonder II-518).

━ 72 ━
A part of Heinlein’s Future History and prequel to the
short story Requiem, The Man Who Sold the
Moon follows a series of events leading up to the
fictional first Moon landing in 1978 and the schemes of
Delos D. Harriman, a businessman who is determined
to personally reach and control the Moon. Although the
science fiction film Destination Moon is generally
described as being based on Heinlein’s novel Rocket
Ship Galileo, the story in fact bears a much closer
resemblance to The Man Who Sold the Moon. The
novella also inspired David Bowie’s song “The Man
Who Sold the World”, in both its title and its central
themes.
9. Fantasy American Literature in the 20th

Century
Fantasy Literature is a genre of imaginative fiction
involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting
other than the real world. While Science - Fiction is
oriented towards the future, Fantasy Literature
describes a forgotten world, full of fairies, dwarfs and
other magical and mystical beings. Fantasy, also spelled
phantasy, imaginative fiction dependent for effect on
strangeness of setting (such as other worlds or times)
and of characters (such as supernatural or unnatural
beings). Fantasy literature is literature set in an
imaginary universe, often but not always without any
locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic,
━ 73 ━
the supernatural and magical creatures are common in
many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy fiction is
concerned with magic, the impossible, or the fantastic.
It can be set in a fictional world that may contain
characters inspired by myth or folklore, such as trolls,
elves and dragons. Many fantasy novels involve
adventure as a key feature. Exploring the ‘impossible’
is a common element in fantasy. Fantasy literature may
be directed at both children and adults.
The fantasy genre is full of countless amazing stories,
worlds, and supernatural beings. American fantasy is a
fairly small sub-genre of fantasy, but it is one that is full
of exciting adventures. Fantasy is a genre of art that uses
magic and other supernatural forms as primary element
of plot, theme or setting. Fantasy is called “the literature
of unreality” or “literature which does not give priority
to realistic representation”.
♣ Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930–1999)

American Author of Fantasy
The most famous American Fantasy author was
probably Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930–1999). Marion
She was an American author of fantasy, historical
fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels. In
her trilogy The Mists of Avalon, The Forests of Avalon
and The Lady of Avalon she combines legends about

━ 74 ━
King Arthur and his court with ancient Celtic legends
about godesses, magicians and faeries.
 Marion Z. Bradley
Marion Bradley was a prolific writer, producing
numerous historical, fantasy, and gothic novels and
short stories under her own name and several
pseudonyms. She is, however, best known for her many
science fiction novels and stories. She published her first
important work, the story “Centaurus Changeling,” in
1954. Her first novel, The Door Through Space,
appeared in 1961. Two more novels, The Sword of
Aldones and The Planet Savers, were published in 1962.
Both take place on Darkover, a planet that is home to a
lost Terran (Earth) colony. It became the setting for a
series of more than 20 science fiction novels by Bradley;
other writers also set their own work on Darkover.

━ 75 ━
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Novels
o The Door Through Space (1961)
o Seven from the Stars (1961)
o The Colors of Space (1963)
o Castle Terror (1965)
o Souvenir of Monique (1967)
o Bluebeard's Daughter (1968)
o The Brass Dragon (1970)
o In the Steps of the Master – The Sixth Sense #2 (1973) (based on
the television series The Sixth Sense, created by Anthony
Lawrence)
o Hunters of the Red Moon (1973) (novelette)
o The Jewel of Arwen (1974) (novelette)
o The Parting of Arwen (1974) (novelette)
o Can Ellen Be Saved? (1975)
o The Endless Voyage (1975)
o Drums of Darkness (1976)
o The Ruins of Isis (1978)
o The Catch Trap (1979)
o The Endless Universe (1979) (rewrite of The Endless Voyage)
o The House Between the Worlds (1980)
o Survey Ship (1980)
o The Colors of Space (1983) (unabridged edition)
o Night's Daughter (1985)
o Warrior Woman (1985)
o The Firebrand (1987)
o Black Trillium (1990) (with Julian May and Andre Norton)
o Lady of the Trillium (1995) (with Elisabeth Waters, initially
uncredited)
10. A List of Some American Novels in the 20th

Century
━ 76 ━
1. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904)
2. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905)
3. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)
4. Three Lives by Gertrude Stein (1909)
5. My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)
6. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (1920)
7. Cane by Jean Toomer (1923)
8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
9. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dresier (1925)
10. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
11. The Bridge of the San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927)
12. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
13. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (1929)
14. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1930)
15. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1931)
16. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth (1934)
17. The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)
18. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara (1934)
19. The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos (1936)
20. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
21. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
22. Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West (1939)
23. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
24. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
25. Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)
26. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)
27. Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener (1947)
28. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948)
29. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (1948)
30. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (1949)
31. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)
32. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
33. Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin (1953)
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34. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)
35. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
36. On the Road by Jack Keroauc (1957)
37. Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1957)
38. The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever (1957)
39. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1958)
40. The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud (1958)
41. Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth (1959)
42. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (1959)
43. The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley (1959)
44. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
45. Rabbit, Run by John Updike (1960)
46. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (1960)
47. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (1961)
48. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
49. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (1961)
50. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
51. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (1967)
52. The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1967)
53. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick (1968)
54. Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
55. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969)
56. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (1970)
57. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (1971)
58. Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed (1972)
59. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972)
60. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
61. Roots by Alex Haley (1976)
62. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
63. The World According to Garp by John Irving (1978)
64. Airships by Barry Hannah (1978)
65. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1982)
66. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
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67. Cathedral by Raymond Carver (1983)
68. Love Medicine by Lousie Erdrich (1984)
69. White Noise by Don Delillo (1985)
70. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)
71. City of Glass by Paul Auster (1985)
72. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
73. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989)
74. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990)
75. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (1991)
Chapter Two
American Drama in the 20th Century

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Concerning American drama, the beginning of the 20th
century brought the most radical changes one can think
of. In the 19th century American drama consisted
merely of imitations of European plays and stage
adaptations of novels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin. There
was no real copyright law to protect dramatists. But
suddenly things started to change and the American
drama scene flourished.
1. Expansion and Rise of American Drama

until the 20th century
Though drama is one of the oldest forms of literature, it
was one of the last of the literary genres to develop in
the United States. The Puritans in New England
regarded theatrical performances as frivolous, so few
plays were staged in earlier years. During the 18th and
19th centuries, drama gradually became an accepted
form of entertainment. However, most of the plays
performed in the United States were imported from
Europe or were adapted from novels. From 1865 to 1900
the American drama occupied a place of so little artistic
importance in American life that the literary historians
have ignored it. Toward the end of the nineteenth
century, American literature entered the realist period,
and American theater took on its own identity.
Until the 20th century, American drama had virtually no
importance in English literature. However, writers such
as Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee
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Williams transformed American drama into an art
form with considerable literary merit worthy of
international recognition.
Realism continued to be the primary form of dramatic
expression in the 20th century and as the century
progressed many talented new dramatists came to the
fore with broad issues such as civil rights and the
devastation wrought by the AID’S epidemic.
In 1920 the Broadway production of Eugene O’Neill’s
Beyond the Horizon marked a turning point in
presenting true-to-life characters who were struggling
to understand their lives. Building on O’Neill’s
achievement, American playwrights Thornton Wilder,
Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur
Miller created dramas in the 1930s and 1940s that met
with critical and popular success. Following World War
II, American dramatists Edward Albee and Lorraine
Hansberry made significant contributions to the
theater. Arthur Miller’s 1953 The Crucible (page 134)
is an example of a modern drama that portrays events
from Puritan times.
The economic collapse of the great Depression of the
1930’s led to the permanent closure of many theatres in
America. The new sound technology in America gave
voice to the motion pictures. A new wave was seen in the
drama of the 1930s that tackled economic suffering, left
wing political ideologies and fears of another world war.
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Clifford Odet’s Waiting for Lefty (1935) debated the
pros and cons of capitalism while Awake and Sing!
(1935) dealt with the 1930s anxieties. Liffian Hellman’s
play The Children’s Hour (1934) displayed social
conscience.
In the mid-40s the most striking new writings for
theatre emerged in the works of Arthur Miller and
Tennessee Williams. The latter contributed many
psychological plays of disillusion such as A Street Car
Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot tin Roof (1955) and
The Glass Menagerie (1944). Arthur Miller’s modern
tragedies All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman
(1949) combined realistic characters and social issues.
During the 1950’s Miller’s chief contributions were The
Crucible (1953) and A view from the Bridge (1955),
while Tennessee Williams played Long Day’s. Journey
into Night (1956) received the Pulitzer Prize
posthumously.
Most famous among new playwrights, William Inge
wrote Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), a realistic play.
Late 1950’s also saw new African American playwriting
with Lorraine Hansberry’s well- acclaimed play Raisin
in the Sun (1959). A major dramatist of the 1960’s
Edward Albee wrote absurdist plays such as Zoo Story
(1959) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) that
examined unsympathetically the modern conditions
influenced by European playwrights Jean Genet,
Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco.
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2. Modernism in American Drama
In the early twentieth century, drama began to grow as
a legitimate literary form in the United States, and some
of the first major American playwrights were taking the
stage. The first half of the twentieth century was rocky,
with World War I, the Great Depression, and World
War II turning the world upside down. American
drama often reflected this upheaval, and many plays
doubled as social commentaries.
Modernism is a literary movement that began around
1914 and focused on style and structure over plot.
Authors experimented with different literary forms,
structures, and points of view, emphasizing how the
story was told rather than the story itself.
Modern American Drama is a title used to define some
of America’s most influential dramatic work
throughout the 20th Century. The sweeping economic,
political, social and cultural changes that occurred in
America began this era of writing and influenced
authors such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams,
Edward Albee and Eugene O’Neill, to write some of the
most influential plays that are still widely known today.
One could suggest that it is not just because they are
written by and about Americans, or that they comment
on its social changes but it is also the idea that all these
dramas have distinct ‘features’ such as language,

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themes, style, characters and structure of similarity to
each other, that allow them to be placed under the title
‘Modern American Drama’. It is these ‘features’ that
heighten each author’s critical comments on American
Society at the time of writing. ‘Modern American
Drama’ could be seen as literary work that comments
on the authors view of the ever changing country and
‘American Dream’ using particular trends of ‘features’.
Modern American Drama generally refers to
dramatic works produced in the United States after
World War II beginning in the middle of the 20th
century. This period encompasses most of the United
States’ best-known classic playwrights, including
Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953), Arthur Miller (1915-2005),
and Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), as well as
contemporary writers such as Tony Kushner (1956-
present), David Henry Hwang (1957-present), and Ayad
Akhtar (1970-present).
Modern American drama is a diverse body of work
encompassing many different genres, themes, styles,
and viewpoints. It occupies an essential place in the
landscape of English literature. Modern American
dramas are read and staged worldwide.
3. Experimentalism in American drama

Like other forms of literature in the twentieth century,
American drama also became increasingly

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experimental. Playwrights played with form, structure,
different narrative techniques, and vernacular language
in their dramas.
American drama can foremost be known for its
‘Experimentalism’ in dramatic forms. American
Drama would not be known as it is now for its different
styles, characters and sets, without this shifting, setting
it apart from the last decades of the 19 th century
American theatre; which had been largely given over to
melodramas with naturalistic acting styles. However
early Modern American Playwrights drew their
influences from European constructs, such as those of
Chekov; intent on representing life within drama in a
more realistic style. Known as Modern Realism, it
represented everyday reality in a style that would seem
familiar to the audiences that came to see these new
plays. This style was carried throughout the Cannon,
and particularly became more popular during
increasing social and cultural changes such as the
escalation of immigration and poverty, women’s rights,
the Depression, Crisis in religion, the development of
America and the continual strive towards the
‘American Dream’. Realism had an influence on the
American stage in this period, but mainly in terms of
elaborately realistic sets.
4. Expressionism in American drama

━ 85 ━
In American Drama expressionism became another
major part of the ‘experimentalism’ happening during
this movement. “Expressionism on the American stage
represents a critical phase in the development of
American dramatic modernism.” Expressionism was a
style in which many playwrights such as Susan
Treadwell, and Edward Albee used, to portray the
changing society of which they wrote, and of the
oppressions and troubles this new emerging society
created, allowing the audience to look at it critically;
even Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller used
aspects of the form, and, “In doing so, they not only
innovated a new dramatic form, but redefined
playwriting from a theatrical craft to a literary art form,
heralding the birth of American dramatic modernism.”
Expressionism: a literary movement that developed
in Germany and made its way to the United States in the
early twentieth century. Expressionism was known for
exaggerating certain elements of the drama to express
the intense inner emotions of the characters and the
failure of social systems, including those related to
government, family, and employment.
Mid to Late Twentieth Century
By the mid-twentieth century, American drama finally
began to gain international recognition on a large scale.
The two most influential playwrights of this period,
besides O’Neill, were Arthur Miller (1915–2005) and
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Tennessee Williams (1911–1983). Works such as
Miller’s modern tragedy Death of a Salesman (1949)
and William’s classic dysfunctional family drama A
Streetcar Named Desire (1947) remain some of the most
performed plays in theatre.
Both of these writers used their plays to delve deeply
into the American psyche, developing complex
characters that explored the plight of the working class,
difficult family dynamics, and the ins and outs of the
human condition.
The mid-twentieth century also saw a rise in the success
of African-American playwrights, including Lorraine
Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), Amiri Baraka’s
Dutchman (1964), and August Wilson’s Fences
(1985).As the century progressed, American drama
continued to diversify, evolving into the complex body
of work we see today. Playwrights of the 60s, 70s, and
80s continued to tackle many important social issues of
the day, including the civil rights movements, the
Vietnam War, and the AIDS crisis.
Theatre also became increasingly experimental and
creative, with American dramatists taking advantage of
different structures, literary forms, and advances in
theatrical performance.
Drama continues to be an important part of modern
American literature. Modern American drama ranges

━ 87 ━
in style from the hyper-realistic to the completely
experimental and deals with a myriad of themes and
ideas.
Works such as Tracy Letts’ August: Osage
County (2007), for example, delve into the deterioration
of the modern American family, while Ayad
Akhtar’s Disgraced (2012) explores post-9/11
Islamophobia and the American-Muslim experience.
Drama in the United States continues to be a place to
explore identity, current social issues, and how
Americans interact with and relate to one another.
5. Features of American Drama

American drama is characterized by realistic
characters, settings, and struggles of everyday life,
American Drama is a literary movement that has
defined what it means to be an American. Much like
American literature in general, American drama is such
a diverse field that it can be difficult to identify common
features. However, much of American drama deals with
current issues, critiques social norms, and relies on in-
depth character studies to drive the action.
Much of American drama, from the twentieth century
to today, deals with the experience of the common man.
The lives of the poor, the working class, or those on the
fringes of society are often dramatized, and many works

━ 88 ━
show how the lives of the characters are impacted by
society and current events.
Many works are also intensely psychological, relying on
in-depth, complex character studies to convey the inner
experiences of the plays’ protagonists.
Many American dramas contain critiques of social
norms, including disillusionment with the American
Dream, unrealistic expectations of the American family,
and the realities of classism and racism in the United
States.
6. Famous American Playwrights in the
20th Century
The three most important figures of American Drama
are Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee
Williams.
1) Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953)

Born on October 16, 1888, in a New York City hotel
room, writer Eugene Gladstone O'Neill is one of the
most admired playwrights of all time. His talent for
poignant and piercing dramas sprang from a life

━ 89 ━
marked by challenges. He was the son of Mary Ellen
"Ella" and James O'Neill, a stage actor.
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill, the winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for
Drama and the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature, is
widely considered the greatest American playwright. No
one, not Maxwell Anderson, Tennessee Williams,
Arthur Miller, nor Edward Albee, approaches O'Neill
in terms of his artistic achievement or his impact on the
American theater.

━ 90 ━
Eugene O'Neill helped foster the maturation of
American drama, as he incorporated the techniques of
both European expressionism and realism in his work.
Influenced by Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg,
brought to the American stage a tragic vision that
influenced scores of American playwrights that
followed.
Eugene O’Neill is probably the most important
American playwright. Eugene O’Neill was the United
States’ first important playwright and the recipient of
the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature. Eugene O'Neill was
the first American dramatist to regard the stage as a
literary medium and the first U.S. playwright to receive
the Nobel Prize for Literature.
His works were generally tragedies that explored
themes of disillusionment and despair in the lives of
people in a variety of socio-economic positions. O’Neill
used vernacular language in his plays to reflect how
people really spoke and was the first writer to legitimize
the literary merit of drama.
O’Neill’s plays are, generally speaking about the
working class and poor people, obsessions and sex, for
O’Neil was influenced by his contemporary Sigmund
Freud very much and about the relationships between
people. Two of his most famous plays are Strange
Interlude, published in 1928 and Mourning Becomes
Electra published in 1931.
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Strange Interlude deals with a woman and her complex
relationships and has got nine acts. Mourning Becomes
Electra is actually a trilogy based on Sophocles’ Oedipus
trilogy and it takes nine hours to perform. O’Neill got
especially famous for his use of uncommon techniques
of staging a play. In 1936 Eugene O’Neill received the
Nobel Prize as the first American playwright.
Eugene O’Neill was a famed playwright and his
masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night is at the
apex of a long string of great plays, including Beyond the
Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange
Interlude (1928), Ah! Wilderness (1933) and The Iceman
Cometh (1946). O'Neill died on November 27, 1953, in
Boston, Massachusetts.
2) Maxwell Anderson (1888- 1959)

James Maxwell Anderson was born in Atlantic,
Pennsylvania, on December 15, 1888. Many of his plays
were written in verse, and they typically touch on social
and moral problems, such as "Winterset" (1935), which
addressed the Sacco & Vanzetti trials in fictional form.
The play, which won the first New York Critics Circle
Award, is about a gangster who visits the children of the
anarchists executed for the murder he himself
committed. Anderson won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for
Drama for his play “Both Your Houses,” and repeated
as the New York Critics Circle Award winner for “High

━ 92 ━
Tor” in 1936. He wrote many historical dramas and two
librettos for Kurt Weill, “Knickerbocker Holiday”
(1938) and “Lost in the Stars” (1940). He was also a
lyricist, his most famous creation being “September
Song” from “Knickerbocker Holiday.”
Maxwell Anderson
His plays included Elizabeth the Queen (1930), Mary of
Scotland (1933), Key Largo (1939); Truckline Café
(1945), Joan of Lorraine (1946), Anne of the Thousand
Days (1947), and The Bad Seed (1954). Anderson also
worked on numerous screenplays, including All Quiet
on the Western Front (1930), for which he received an
Academy Award nomination, Invisible Power (1932),
Rain (1932), Death Takes a Holiday (1934), and So Red
the Rose (1935).
Plays of his that were turned into movies were Mary of
Scotland (1936), Saturday’s Children, which was filmed
three times (once as Maybe It’s Love), Winterset (1936),

━ 93 ━
Elizabeth the Queen, which became The Private Lives of
Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Eve of St. Mark (1944),
Knickerbocker Holiday (1944). Key Largo (1948), Joan of
Lorraine, which became Joan of Arc (1948), The Bad
Seed (1956), The Devil's Hornpipe, which became Never
Steal Anything Small (1959), and Anne of the Thousand
Days (1969). What Price Glory? was made into a silent
film in 1926 and was remade by John Ford in 1952.
Anderson’s Principles (Rules) that governed
serious drama
 The play deals with the heart or mind of a person, not
mainly with external events.
 The story must consist of a conflict inside a signal
human being between good and evil, and such
categories are defined according to the audience's
judgment.
 The protagonist, representative of the forces of good,
must win; if he has represented evil, he must be
defeated by the good and realize the fact.
 The protagonist, who must emerge at the end of the
play as more admirable that at the beginning, must
not be perfect.
 The protagonist has to be exceptional; or, if he is a
man from the street, he must epitomize qualities of
excellence that the audience is able to admire.
 Excellence on the stage must ever be moral excellence.

━ 94 ━
 A healthy moral atmosphere must prevail in the play;
evil must not triumph.
 The theater audience admires these human qualities
on the stage: woman's passionate faith and fidelity,
man's strength of conviction and positive character;
the audience especially resent these qualities:
woman's infidelity, man's cowardice and refusal to
fight for a belief.
3) Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)

Thornton Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, on
April 17, 1897. He spent part of his boyhood in China
and was educated principally in California, graduating
from Berkeley High School in 1915. Thornton Wilder
was a pivotal figure in the literary history of the
twentieth-century. He is the only writer to win Pulitzer
Prizes for both fiction and drama. He received the
Pulitzer for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
and the plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our
Teeth (1942). His other best-selling nov-els include The
Cabala, The Woman of Andros, Heaven’s My
Destination, The Ides of March, The Eighth Day and
Theophilus North. His other major dramas include The
Matchmaker (adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly!) and
The Alcestiad. The Happy Journey to Trenton and
Camden, Pullman Car Hiawatha and The Long
Christmas Dinner are among his well-known shorter

━ 95 ━
plays. Wilder enjoyed acting and played major roles in
several of his plays in summer theater productions.
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder’s Our Town is a major work in
the canon of American theater. Translated and
produced throughout the world, it has been called a
poetic chronicle of life and death. First produced at the
McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, on
January 22, 1938, the play wavered in Boston, was
moved to New York, and, to the surprise of both the
playwright and his collaborators, won a Pulitzer Prize
as the best play of the season. Our Town remains a
perennial favorite among directors, particularly in
small-town productions.
Thornton Wilder’s Major Works

1. The Cabala, novel, 1926.

━ 96 ━
2. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, novel, 1927.
3. The Angel That Troubled the Waters, and Other
Plays, drama, 1928.
4. The Woman of Andros, novel, 1930.
5. The Long Christmas Dinner, and Other Plays in One
Act, drama, 1931.
6. Lucrece, drama, 1933.
7. Heaven's My Destination, novel, 1935.
8. Our Town, drama, 1938.
9. The Merchant of Yonkers, drama, 1938.
10. Our Town, screenplay, 1940.
11. The Skin of Our Teeth, historical drama, 1942.
12. Shadow of a Doubt, screenplay, 1942.
13. Our Century, drama, 1947.
14. The Ides of March, novel, 1948.
15. The Matchmaker, drama, 1954.
16. The Alcestiad, drama, 1955.
17. The Matchmaker, screenplay, 1958.
18. The Seven Deadly Sins, drama cycle, 1964.
19. The Seven Ages of Man, drama cycle, 1964.
20. The Eighth Day, novel, 1967.
21. Theophilus North, novel, 1973.
4) Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams
on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. As an
infant, his mother mostly looked after him because of
his father's career as a shoe salesman. Williams’ father
━ 97 ━
was an alcoholic, violent, and frequently absent because
he had to travel for work. Tennessee Williams lived a
turbulent life owing to the conflicting relationships with
his family members and lovers, drug and alcohol abuse,
the losses he experienced, and the critical eye of the
media. Tennessee Williams died on 25 February 1983 in
a hotel room in New York. His death was initially
thought to have been caused by choking on a bottle cap,
but it was later revealed that he died from the high levels
of Seconal (a drug taken for insomnia and anxiety) in
his bloodstream.
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams wrote a variety of plays, essays,
poems and memoirs throughout his life, but he is most
celebrated for his plays. His plays are exemplary of the
Modernist period of drama, which often featured
dramatic genres such as realism and expressionism.
━ 98 ━
Below is a shortened list of examples of what Williams
has published throughout his career.
Tennessee Williams was a Pulitzer Prize-winning
playwright. He was awarded four Drama Critic Circle
Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes and the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. American dramatist whose plays reveal a
world of human frustration in which sex and violence
underlie an atmosphere of Romantic gentility.
In his dramas, Tennessee Williams deals with disturbed
emotions and unresolved sexuality. Tennessee Williams
was well known for his dramas that tackled
controversial subjects, such as violence and sexuality
that were largely taboo at the time.
For Williams, Sigmund Freud and his exploration of
sexual desire play an important role. His most famous
plays are The Glass Menagerie (1944) and A Streetcar
named Desire (1947) about a faded Southern beauty
called Blanche Dubois and her social descend. In the end
she is raped by her brother-in-law and commits suicide.
Tennessee William’s Plays
1) The Glass Menagerie (1944)
2) A Streetcar named Desire (1947)
3) Camino Real (1953)
4) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
5) Orpheus Descending (1957)
6) Suddenly Last Summer (1958)

━ 99 ━
7) Vieux Carré (1977)
8) Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980)
9) A House Not Meant to Stand (1982)
Tennessee William’s Novels

 The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1950)
 Moise and the World of Reason (1975)
Tennessee William’s Collections of short stories
 Hard Candy: A Book of Short Stories (1954)
 The Knightly Quest (1969)
 Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (1974)
5) Arthur Miller (1915–2005)

Arthur Miller was born in Manhattan in 1915 to an
immigrant family of Polish and Jewish descent. Arthur
Miller was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American
playwright. Like O’Neill, Miller was known for his
complex and tragic depiction of inner emotions as well
as disillusionment with American society and the
American dream.
In the period immediately following the end of World
War II, American theater was transformed by the work
of playwright Arthur Miller. Profoundly influenced by
the Depression and the war that immediately followed
it, Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction and
unrest within the greater American psyche. His probing
━ 100 ━
dramas proved to be both the conscience and
redemption of the times, allowing people an honest view
of the direction the country had taken.
Arthur Miller
In 1944, his first play, “The Man Who Had All the Luck”,
opened to horrible reviews. A story about an incredibly
successful man who is unhappy with that success, “The
Man Who Had All The Luck” was already addressing
the major themes of Miller’s later work. “All My Sons,”
a tragedy about a manufacturer who sells faulty parts
to the military in order to save his business, was an
instant success. Only two years after the success of “All
My Sons,” Miller came out with his most famous and
well-respected work, “Death of a Salesman.” Dealing
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again with both desperation and paternal responsibility,
“Death of a Salesman” focused on a failed businessman
as he tries to remember and reconstruct his life.
Eventually killing himself to leave his son insurance
money, the salesman seems a tragic character out of
Shakespeare or Dostoevsky.
In the 1950s the career of Arthur Miller reached its
peak. His masterpiece Death of a Salesman, about a man
searching for merit and worth in his life, who finally
fails, was published in 1949. Death of a Salesman
combines realism with naturalism - a typical feature of
the late 1940s - and Miller managed to create a round
plot as well as round characters. Although Miller’s
succeeding plays didn’t reach the same level of success,
they were also quite popular. The Crucible e.g. is a
historical play about the Salem witchcraft trials in the
17th century. Although it is set in colonial times it had
quite a topical meaning in the 1950s, for it referred to
Senator McCarthy’s desperate hunt for Communists at
that time. Miller is today still one of the most influential
persons concerning American drama.
In 1956, Miller divorced his first wife, Mary Slattery, his
former college sweetheart with whom he had two
children, Jane Ellen and Robert. Less than a month
later, Miller married actress and Hollywood sex
symbol Marilyn Monroe, whom he'd first met in 1951 at
a Hollywood party. Miller and Monroe were married
for five years, during which time the tragic sex symbol
━ 102 ━
struggled with personal troubles and drug addiction.
Monroe and Miller divorced. Monroe died the following
year, and Miller's controversial 1964 drama After the
Fall was believed to have been partially inspired by
their relationship.
Miller's other plays include A View From the
Bridge (1955), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968),
The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972),
The American Clock (1980) and Broken Glass (1994).
6) Edward Albee (1928- 2015)

Edward Albee is a master of strange, funny dramas that
explore the depths of humanity through its
eccentricities. Edward Albee had a versatile writing
style, which shifted from Naturalist to Absurdist styles.
Albee wrote psychological and satirical dramas in which
the characters are realistic but also act in strange,
absurd ways. Albee's writing style was influenced by the
Naturalist and The Theatre of the Absurd movements.
Edward Albee's playwriting is considered by some
critics to be an American counterpart of the Theater of
the Absurd.

━ 103 ━
 Edward Albee
Edward Albee’s full name is Edward Franklin Albee.
He was born in Washington, D. C. - U.S.A and died in
New York. At the age of two weeks, he was adopted by
Mr. and Mrs. Reed Albee of Larchmont, New York, and
renamed Edward Franklin Albee III. From an early
age, Edward Albee knew that he was adopted, but he
has never attempted to locate his birth parents.
Edward Albee is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
who is considered one of the greatest American
playwrights of his generation for his plays including The
Zoo Story (1959) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(1962) Edward Albee’s psychologically astute and
piercing dramas explored the contentiousness of
intimacy, the gap between self-delusion and truth and
the roiling desperation beneath the facade of

━ 104 ━
contemporary life, died on Friday at his home in
Montauk, N.Y. He was 88.
Albee received Pulitzer Prizes for A Delicate Balance
(1966), Seascape (1972) and Three Tall Women (1994).
Edward Albee’s plays combine realistic and abstract
themes. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf published in
1962 e.g. is a story about four people, two married
couples, who are sitting in a room leading a
conversation. In the course of time these conversation
reveals intimate facts about one of the couples and the
end of the play leaves them standing exposed, their
marriage, a farce anyway, torn into pieces. Who’s afraid
of Virginia Woolf was often criticized because of its
harshness and drastic language, but on the other hand
it is regarded as one of the most extraordinary abstract
comedies of the 20th century.
Chapter Three
━ 105 ━
American Poetry in the 20th Century
1. Introduction
American poetry and poetry in general was not very
influential in the first years of the 20th century. Between
1900 and the end of World War II, American poetry was
entirely transformed, producing a body of work whose
influence was felt throughout the world. Poetry ranged
between traditional types of verse and experimental
writing that departed radically from the established
forms of the 19th century.
Two New England poets, Edwin Arlington Robinson
and Robert Frost, who were not noted for technical
experimentation, won both critical and popular acclaim
in this period. Robinson, whose first book appeared in
1896, did his best work in sonnets, ballad stanzas, and
blank verse. In the 1920s he won three Pulitzer Prizes—
for his Collected Poems (published 1921), The Man Who
Died Twice (1925), and Tristram (1927). Like Robinson,
Frost used traditional stanzas and blank verse in
volumes such as A Boy’s Will (1913), his first book,
and North of Boston (1914), New Hampshire (1923), A
Further Range (1936), and A Masque of Reason (1945).
The best-known poet of his generation, Frost, like
Robinson, saw and commented upon the tragic aspects
of life in poems such as “Design,” “Directive,” and
“Provide, Provide.” Frost memorably crafted the
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language of common speech into traditional poetic
form, with epigrammatic effect. After the 2nd World
War poetry can be divided up into several main
directions.
2. Traditionalism in American Poetry

Traditionalism is the adherence to the doctrines or
practices of a tradition. Traditionalism is the beliefs of
those opposed to modernism, liberalism, or radicalism.
Traditional poets are mostly coming from the South or
the East Coast of the U.S. and use, as the name tells,
traditional topics as well as a traditional style of writing.
What’s interesting is that many poets like e.g. Robert
Penn Warren were supporters of Traditionalism first,
but turned to completely different directions of poetry
later.
Traditional poets, unlike many experimentalists who
distrust "too poetic" diction, welcome resounding poetic
lines. Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) ended one poem
with the words "To love so well the world that we may
believe, in the end, in God." Allen Tate (1899-1979)
ended a poem, "Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!"
Traditional poets also at times use a somewhat
rhetorical diction of obsolete or odd words.
Traditional writers include acknowledged masters of
traditional forms and diction who write with a readily
recognizable craft, often using rhyme or a set metrical
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pattern. Often they are from the U.S. Eastern seaboard
or from the southern part of the country, and teach in
colleges and universities. Richard Eberhart and
Richard Wilbur; the older Fugitive poets John Crowe
Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren; such
accomplished younger poets as John Hollander and
Richard Howard; and the early Robert Lowell are
examples. They are established and frequently
anthologized.
Occasionally, as in Hollander, Howard, and James
Merrill (1926- ), self-conscious diction combines with
wit, puns, and literary allusions. Merrill, who is
innovative in his urban themes, unrhymed lines,
personal subjects, and light conversational tone, shares
a witty habit with the traditionalists in "The Broken
Heart" (1966), writing about a marriage as if it were a
cocktail:
Always that same old story -
Father Time and Mother Earth,
A marriage on the rocks.
Obvious fluency and verbal pyrotechnics by some poets,
like Merrill and John Ashbery, make them successful in
traditional terms, although their poetry redefines
poetry in radically innovative ways. Stylistic
gracefulness makes some poets seem more traditional
than they are, as in the case of Randall Jarrell (1914-
1965) and A.R. Ammons (1926- ). Ammons creates
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intense dialogues between humanity and nature; Jarrell
steps into the trapped consciousness of the dispossessed
-- women, children, doomed soldiers, as in "The Death
of the Ball Turret Gunner" (1945):
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Although many traditional poets use rhyme, not all
rhymed poetry is traditional in subject or tone. Poet
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- ) writes of the difficulties of
living -- let alone writing -- in urban slums. Her
"Kitchenette Building" (1945) asks how:
Could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall...
Many poets, including Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Richard
Wilbur, Robert Lowell, and Robert Penn Warren began
writing traditionally, using rhyme and meters, but
abandoned these in the 1960s under the pressure of
public events and a gradual trend toward open forms.

━ 109 ━
3. Idiosyncratic American Poets
The second group are the so called Idiosyncratic
Poets. The fundaments of idiosyncratic poetry are
traditional, but the poets just use them to explore and
experiment with new forms of poetry.
Idiosyncratic means unique to an individual. If you
describe someone's actions or characteristics as
idiosyncratic, you mean that they are rather unusual.
Idiosyncratic Writing is powerful, emotive writing,
straight from our psyche using personal icons in the
script. Idiosyncratic writers are ‘selfish’, they write
exactly what they want to express. There is an inherent
vanity in writing; believing you have something special
to offer the world is built-in to the very act of putting
your work out into the world.
Idiosyncratic Poets are those who have developed
unique styles drawing on tradition but extending it into
new realms with a distinctively contemporary flavor, in
addition to Plath and Sexton, include John Berryman,
Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, Philip Levine, James
Dickey, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich.
4. Experimental American Poetry

Experimentalism is one part of modernism and
postmodernist literature. Writers take risks, try strange
new techniques, and attempt to create something that’s
never been seen before. Experimentalism is a term used
━ 110 ━
to describe poetry and other forms of literature that
pushed the boundaries of what was considered
literature during the modernist and post-modernist
movements.
Writers who try to create experimental poetry want to
provide readers with a new point of view. They are
uninterested in walking the same ground as poets and
authors before them. Instead, they are willing to take
risks and try things, as the examples below prove, that
some readers may not understand. Some of this poetry
has been widely accepted by readers around the world,
while other examples are still considered quite difficult
to understand and have yet to be welcomed into the
mainstream.
The force behind Lowell’s mature achievement and
much of contemporary poetry lies in the
experimentation begun in the 1950s by a number of
poets. They may be divided into five loose schools,
identified by Donald Allen in his The New American
Poetry (1960), the first anthology to present the work of
poets who were previously neglected by the critical and
academic communities.
Inspired by jazz and abstract expressionist painting,
most of the experimental writers are a generation
younger than Lowell. They have tended to be bohemian,
counter-culture intellectuals who disassociated
themselves from universities and outspokenly criticized
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“bourgeois” American society. Their poetry is daring,
original, and sometimes shocking. In its search for new
values, it claims affinity with the archaic world of myth,
legend, and traditional societies such as those of the
American Indian. The forms are looser, more
spontaneous, organic; they arise from the subject
matter and the feeling of the poet as the poem is written,
and from the natural pauses of the spoken language. As
Allen Ginsberg noted in "Improvised Poetics," "first
thought best thought."
5. The Black Mountain School of American

Poetry
Black Mountain College, located in a collection of
church buildings in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It
was one of the first schools to stress the importance of
teaching creative arts and the belief that, in combination
with technical and analytical skills, the arts are essential
to human understanding.
The Black Mountain School centered on Black
Mountain College an experimental liberal arts college in
Asheville, North Carolina, where poets Charles Olson,
Robert Duncan, and Robert Creeley taught in the early
1950s. Ed Dorn, Joel Oppenheimer, and Jonathan
Williams studied there, and Paul Blackburn, Larry
Eigner, and Denise Levertov published work in the
school’s magazines, Origin and the Black Mountain
Review. The Black Mountain School is linked with
━ 112 ━
Charles Olson’s theory of “projective verse,” which
insisted on an open form based on the spontaneity of the
breath pause in speech and the typewriter line in
writing.
Though the Black Mountain poets never labeled
themselves or self-identified as a school of poetry, they
are a group of interconnected poets, many of whom
were connected together through Black Mountain
College: an experimental, arts-centered university in
North Carolina in operation from 1933 to 1957.
Some Black Mountain poets, such as Robert Creeley,
Robert Duncan, Hilda Morley, and Charles Olson,
taught at the college. Others, including Ed Dorn,
Jonathan Williams, and John Wieners, were students or
visitors to Black Mountain during Olson’s 1951–56
tenure on faculty and as rector. Still others, notably
Paul Blackburn, Denise Levertov, and Larry Eigner,
never visited Black Mountain College but published
poetry alongside the others in the Black Mountain
Review (1954–57), a literary magazine sponsored by the
college and edited by Creeley. When editor Donald
Allen organized his highly influential anthology The
New American Poetry in 1960, he placed a group of
poets, now called the Black Mountain poets, first.
In the 1950s, Black Mountain poets might have attended
writing classes together, or found themselves listed in
the same tables of contents in magazines and journals.
━ 113 ━
More important, they shared commitments to poetry
and poetics.
The Black Mountain poets’ preoccupations are perhaps
its lasting legacy to contemporary poetry: poetics and
poetics statements, process and techniques such as
sequences, the poem as a field in which disparate
energies, systems of knowledge, and personal
experience converge, engaging poets to this day. Many
Black Mountain poets went on to have long and varied
careers.
The poetry of the Black Mountain School were from the
1950s and early 1960s. The end of the Black Mountain
School is generally considered to be 1970, the year
Charles Olson died.
6. The San Francisco School of American

Poetry
San Francisco School pots are a constellation of writers
and artists active in the San Francisco Bay Area at the
end of World War II. Poets associated with the San
Francisco Renaissance include Kenneth Rexroth,
Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser, Jack Spicer, and Michael
McClure. Though the poets wrote in different styles and
often espoused different aesthetic and political views, all
favored the Modernist tradition of innovation, and
many were influenced by Charles Olson and the Black
Mountain School.

━ 114 ━
The work of the San Francisco School -- which includes
most West Coast poetry in general -- owes much to
Eastern philosophy and religion, as well as to Japanese
and Chinese poetry. This is not surprising because the
influence of the Orient has always been strong in the
U.S. West. The land around San Francisco -- the Sierra
Nevada Mountains and the jagged seacoast -- is lovely
and majestic, and poets from that area tend to have a
deep feeling for nature. Many of their poems are set in
the mountains or take place on backpacking trips. The
poetry looks to nature instead of literary tradition as a
source of inspiration.
San Francisco poets include Jack Spicer, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, Robert Duncan, Phil Whalen, Lew Welch,
Gary Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, Joanne Kyger, and
Diane diPrima. Many of these poets identify with
working people. Their poetry is often simple, accessible,
and optimistic.
At its best, as seen in the work of Gary Snyder (1930- ),
San Francisco poetry evokes the delicate balance of the
individual and the cosmos. In Snyder's "Above Pate
Valley" (1955), the poet describes working on a trail
crew in the mountains and finding obsidian arrowhead
flakes from vanished Indian tribes:
On a hill snowed all but summer
A land of fat summer deer,
They came to camp. On their
Own trails. I followed my own
━ 115 ━
Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill,
Pick, singlejack, and sack
Of dynamite.
Ten thousand years.
7. The Beat Poets in America

In the 1940s and 50s, a new generation of poets rebelled
against the conventions of mainstream American life
and writing. They became known as the Beat Poets––a
name that evokes weariness, down-and-outness, the
beat under a piece of music, and beatific spirituality.
Beat Poets sought to write in an authentic, unfettered
style. “First thought, best thought” was how central
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg described their method of
spontaneous writing. Poetically experimental and
politically dissident, the Beat poets expanded their
consciousness through explorations of hallucinogenic
drugs, sexual freedom, Eastern religion, and the natural
world.
Beat Poetry emerged from the disillusionment that
followed World War II, a period of unimaginable
atrocities including the Holocaust and the use of nuclear
weapons against Japan. The battle against social
conformity and literary tradition was central to the
work of the Beats. Ginsberg’s first book, Howl and
Other Poems, is often considered representative of the
Beat poets.

━ 116 ━
Beat poets included Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder,
Gregory Corso, Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti,
Diane di Prima, Neal Cassady, Anne Waldman, and
Michael McClure. Although William S. Burroughs
and Jack Kerouac are often best remembered for works
of fiction such as Naked Lunch and On the
Road, respectively, they also wrote poetry and were very
much part of the Beats as well.
Beat Poetry was intentionally less formal than that of
poetic movements that had come before. Where
previous movements had followed certain rules and
ideas regarding poetic structure, the Beat writers made
poetry more personal, demanding less structured forms
of writing that would allow for the free-flow of
emotions, ideas, and individual beliefs. These writers
were also influenced by jazz music and incorporated the
spontaneity of the music into the release of their ideas.
Due to the free and personal nature of the writing, the
subjects and content of the work were much more
controversial to the public than movements of the past.
Free Verse was the preferred form of the Beat Poets.
Favorite topics of the Beats? Transgression, obscenity,
and alienation, which isn’t too surprising given that the
center of their movement was about breaking with main
stream culture. The Beats were often inspired by
Buddhism, hallucinogenic drugs, and higher
consciousness.

━ 117 ━
8. The New York School of American Poetry
The New York School of poetry refers to a group of
experimental painters and a poets who lived and
worked in downtown Manhattan in the 1950s and 60s.
New York School poetry tended to be witty, urbane, and
conversational. The poets allowed everyday moments,
pop culture, humor, and spontaneity into their work,
seeking to capture life as it happened. Influenced by
literary surrealism and abstract expressionist painting,
they responded to the events of the day without
embracing the heavy seriousness characteristic of some
post-war intellectuals. Poets belonging to the New York
School mostly had a very good education and their
topics were moral questions, political issues, or the
urban lifestyle.
The New York School of poetry began around 1960
in New York City. Heavily influenced by Surrealism
and Modernism, the poetry of the New York School was
serious but also ironic, and incorporated an urban
sensibility into much of the work.
The New York School of poets is often organized
into two generations: the first was centered around a
core group of five poets: John Ashbery, Barbara Guest,
James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O’Hara.
The second generation included poets Alice Notley and
her husband, Ted Berrigan; Bill Berkson; and Ron
Padgett. During the second generation, members
━ 118 ━
founded nonacademic learning centers that served local
communities, such as the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s
Church.
Unlike the Beat and San Franciso poets, the poets of the
New York School are not interested in overtly moral
questions, and, in general, they steer clear of political
issues. They have the best formal educations of any
group.
The major figures of the New York School -- John
Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch -- met
while they were undergraduates at Harvard University.
They are quintessentially urban, cool, nonreligious, and
witty with a poignant, pastel sophistication. Their
poems are fast moving, full of urban detail, incongruity,
and an almost palpable sense of suspended belief.
New York City is the fine arts center of America and the
birthplace of Abstract Expressionism, a major
inspiration of this poetry. Most of the poets worked as
art reviewers or museum curators, or collaborated with
painters. Perhaps because of their feeling for abstract
art, which distrusts figurative shapes and obvious
meanings, their work is often difficult to comprehend,
as in the later work of John Ashbery (1927- ), perhaps
the most influential poet writing today.
Ashbery’s fluid poems record thoughts and emotions as
they wash over the mind too swiftly for direct

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articulation. His profound, long poem, Self-Portrait in a
Convex Mirror (1975), which won three major prizes,
glides from thought to thought, often reflecting back on
itself:
A ship
Flying unknown colors has entered the harbor.
You are allowing extraneous matters
To break up your day...
9. Surrealism and Existentialism in

American Poetry
Surrealist literature is notable because it often uses
poetic techniques to defy logic, create free associations,
and develop strange, dream-like narratives that are
often non-linear. Surrealism was a celebration of the
individual and a creed of non-conformism. The
existentialists also extolled the individual, and such
values as freedom of choice, individual dignity, personal
love, and creative effort were of paramount importance.
For them, also, individualism meant nonconformism.
Existentialism is the philosophical belief that we are
each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our
own lives. Our individual purpose and meaning is not
given to us by Gods, governments, teachers or other
authorities. Existentialism aims to unravel some of the
most profound issues around human existence. Taking
as their starting point the confusion, anxiety, and

━ 120 ━
disorientation they feel at a seemingly pointless and
absurd world. Existentialism is a movement of 20th-
century literature that focuses on the individual and his
or her relationship with the universe or God. This
existentialist tag has been applied to writers,
philosophers, visual artist and film-makers; the
movement flourished in Europe.
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in
Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists
depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed
techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express
itself. The movement represented a reaction against
what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the
“rationalism” that had guided European culture and
politics in the past and that had culminated in the
horrors of World War I. According to the major
spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André
Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in
1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious
and unconscious realms of experience so completely that
the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the
everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a
surreality.” Its aim was, according to leader André
Breton, to “resolve the previously contradictory
conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality,
a super-reality”, or surreality. It produced works of
painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography,
and other media.

━ 121 ━
Lord of the Flies: The Lord of the Flies is sometimes
characterized as existentialist literature for its
exploration of a world where “existence precedes
essence”. The cast of children find themselves stranded
on an island with no purpose, social structure, or future.
Muhammad Nasrullah Khan’ poem: God, Do You
Understand My Language
Muhammad Nasrullah Khan is a Pakistani-Canadian writer. His
writings are well-recognized internationally for his unique style.
God, my mother told me,

You are the embodiment of love.
Since then, I have adored you most.
But I wonder do you understand me?
I read your book in the foreign language
of those who rule us.
Do you not hear the cry of the children who sleep on dirt floors?
Their souls evaporate into the night
— the dark and cold embrace of death.
How can you ignore the suffering of a child?
Surrealist poetry was always a kind of poetry for the

weak - ethnic minorities, foreigners living in the U. S.A.:
and women - being a counterpart to white, male,
mainstream poetry. A recent development of poetry is
the so called language Poetry. Language poets promote
open forms of poetry and a multicultural way of writing.
They use images from pop- culture, the media and
fashion. Mostly they don’t want to be interpreted by the

━ 122 ━
reader, but want the reader to participate in their
poetry.
In his anthology defining the new schools, Donald Allen
includes a fifth group he cannot define because it has no
clear geographical underpinning. This vague group
includes recent movements and experiments. Chief
among these are surrealism, which expresses the
unconscious through vivid dreamlike imagery, and
much poetry by women and ethnic minorities that has
flourished in recent years. Though superficially distinct,
surrealists, feminists, and minorities appear to share a
sense of alienation from white, male, mainstream
literature.
Although T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Ezra
Pound had introduced symbolist techniques into
American poetry in the 1920s, surrealism, the major
force in European poetry and thought in Europe during
and after World War II, did not take root in the United
States. Not until the 1960s did surrealism (along with
existentialism) become domesticated in America under
the stress of the Vietnam conflict.
During the 1960s, many American writers -- W.S.
Merwin, Robert Bly, Charles Simic, Charles Wright,
and Mark Strand, among others -- turned to French and
especially Spanish surrealism for its pure emotion, its
archetypal images, and its models of anti- rational,
existential unrest.
━ 123 ━
10. Samples of the 20th Century American
Poets
 1) Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco,
California. His father William Frost, a journalist and an
ardent Democrat, died when Frost was about eleven
years old. His Scottish mother, the former Isabelle
Moody, resumed her career as a schoolteacher to
support her family.
 Robert Frost
In 1912 Frost sold his farm and took his wife and four
young children to England. There he published his first
collection of poems, A Boy’s Will, at the age of 39. It was
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followed by North Boston (1914), which gained
international reputation. The collection contains some
of Frost’s best-known poems: 'Mending Wall,' 'The
Death of the Hired Man,' 'Home Burial,' 'A Servant to
Servants,' 'After Apple-Picking,' and 'The Wood-Pile.'
In 1916 appeared his third collection of verse, Mountain
Interval, which contained such poems as 'The Road Not
Taken,' 'The Oven Bird,' 'Birches,' and 'The Hill Wife.'
Frost's poems show deep appreciation of natural world
and sensibility about the human aspirations.
In his poems Frost depicted the fields and farms of his
surroundings, observing the details of rural life, which
hide universal meaning.
Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

(1) Text of "The Road Not Taken (August 1916)
①
1. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
2. And sorry I could not travel both
3. And be one traveller, long I stood
4. And looked down one as far as I could
5. To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Diverged = moving apart in different directions
Bent in the undergrowth = curved or crooked in brush growing
beneath taller trees in a forest.

━ 125 ━
②
6. Then took the other, as just as fair,
7. And having perhaps the better claim,
8. Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
9. Though as for that the passing there
10. Had worn them really about the same,
Fair = large
Wanted wear = used, worn out
Worn = damaged by long use
③
11. And both that morning equally lay
12. In leaves no step had trodden black.
13. Oh, I kept the first for another day!
14. Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
15. I doubted if I should ever come back.
④
16. I shall be telling this with a sigh
17. Somewhere ages and ages hence:
18. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
19. I took the one less travelled by,
20. And that has made all the difference.
Sigh = utterance expressing pain ‫تنهيدة‬
(2) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: Introduction and
Background
Frost “The Road Not Taken” is a narrative
poem by Robert Frost, published in 1916. Its central

━ 126 ━
theme is the divergence of paths, both literally and
figuratively, although its interpretation is noted for
being complex and potentially divergent.
Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” as a joke for
a friend, the poet Edward Thomas, an English-Welsh
poet, who, when out walking with Frost in England
would often regret not having taken a different path.
When they went walking together, Thomas was
chronically indecisive about which road they ought to
take and — in retrospect — ‫ باسترجاع الماضى‬often
lamented that they should, in fact, have taken the other
one. In other words, Frost's friend regretted not taking
the road that might have offered the best opportunities,
despite it being an unknown.
Frost told Thomas: “No matter which road you
take, you’ll always sigh and wish you’d taken another.”
So it's ironic that Frost meant the poem to be somewhat
light-hearted, but it turned out to be anything but
nothing more - only. People take it very seriously.
(3) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: Summary of
"The Road Not Taken"
The speaker stands in the woods, considering a fork
‫ مفترق طرق‬- ‫ تفرع – تشعب‬in the road. Both ways are equally
worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The
speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the
other road another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that
he will have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that
━ 127 ━
someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a
slight twist: He will claim that he took the less-travelled
road.
(4) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: Analysis of "The
Road Not Taken"
“The Road Not Taken” is made up of four stanzas
of five lines, each with a rhyme scheme of ABAAB. This
poem is one of Frost’s most beloved works. Since its
publication, many readers have analysed the poem as a
nostalgic commentary on life choices. The narrator
decided to seize the day and express himself as an
individual by choosing the road that was “less travelled
by.” As a result of this decision, the narrator claims, his
life was fundamentally different that it would have been
if he had chosen the well-travelled path.
This reading of the poem is extremely popular
because every reader can empathize with the narrator’s
decision: having to choose between two roads without
having any knowledge of where each road will lead.
Moreover, the narrator’s decision to choose the “less
travelled” road demonstrates his courage. Rather than
taking the safe road that others have travelled, the
narrator prefers to make his own way in the world.
Another interpretation of the poem is that the
speaker only distinguishes the roads from one another
after he has already selected one and travelled many

━ 128 ━
years through life. When he first comes upon the fork in
the road, the roads are described as being
fundamentally identical. In terms of beauty, both roads
are equally “fair,” and the overall “…passing there /
Had worn them really about the same.”
(5) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: The Literal and
Symbolic Meaning of "The Road Not Taken"
Regarding the Literal Meaning of "The Road Not
Taken", it can be said that the poem tells the story of a
man who reaches a fork in the road, and randomly
chooses to take one and not the other.
Frost uses the road as a metaphor for life. He
portrays our lives as a path we are walking along toward
an undetermined destination. Then, the poet reaches a
fork in the road. The fork is a metaphor for a life-
altering choice in which a compromise is not possible.
The traveler must go one way, or the other.
The descriptions of each road indicates to the reader
that, when making a life-altering decision, it is
impossible to see where that decision will lead. At the
moment of decision-making, both roads present
themselves equally, thus the choice of which to go down
is, essentially, a toss-up – a game of chance.
The metaphor is activated. Life offers two choices,
both are valid but the outcomes could be vastly
different, existentially speaking. Which road to take?
━ 129 ━
The speaker is in two minds. He wants to travel both,
and is "sorry" he cannot, but this is physically
impossible.
(6) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: Man’s Choice
between Determinism, Fatalism and Free Will
‫إخـتـيـار اإلنسان بـيـن الحـتـمـية واإلرادة الحرة والقدر‬
 Free will vs Determinism

Determinism is often contrasted with free will. The
free will vs determinism debate revolves around the
extent to which Man’s behaviour is the result of forces
over which he has no control or whether people are able
to decide for themselves whether to act or behave in a
certain way.
 Free Will and Choice
Free will is a moral, religious, and social concept that
is central to philosophy and most religions. Free will has
traditionally been conceived of as a kind of power to
control one’s choices and actions. Free will is the ability
to choose between different possible courses of
action unimpeded (Omoregie). Some conceive free will
to be the capacity to make choices in which the outcome
has not been determined by past events. Thus, Free will
is the idea that we are able to have some choice in how
we act and assumes that we are free to choose our
behaviour, in other words we are self-determined.

━ 130 ━
According to freewill a person is responsible for their
own actions.
 Determinism as a Philosophical and Religious View
Determinism is the Philosophical and religious view
that all events are determined completely by previously
existing causes. Determinism suggests that only one
course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with
the existence of free will thus conceived (Baumeister 1–
52). External Determinism see the cause of behaviour as
being outside the individual from environment, such as
parental influence, the media, or school. Internal
Determinism means that the forces that are the
determining factor are from inside. Freud also viewed
behaviour being controlled from inside the individual,
in the form of unconscious motivation or childhood
events, known as psychic determinism.
 Levels of Determinism
Hard determinism sees free will as an illusion and
believes that every event and action has a cause. Soft
determinism represents a middle ground, people do
have a choice, but that choice is constrained by external
or internal factors.
Psychologists who take the free will view suggest
that determinism removes freedom and dignity, and
devalues human behavior. By creating general laws of
behavior, deterministic psychology underestimates the
━ 131 ━
uniqueness of human beings and their freedom to
choose their own destiny (Maslow 370-96).
 Fatalism
Fatalism is normally distinguished from
determinism, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Causal
Determinism) as a form of teleological determinism.
Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen,
so that humans have no control over their future.
(7) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: The Ambiguity of
Free Will versus Determinism
“The Road Not Taken” is an ambiguous poem that
allows the reader to think about choices in life, whether
to go with the prevailing current of thought or go it
alone. If life is a journey, this poem highlights those
times in life when a decision has to be made. Which way
will you go?
The ambiguity springs from the question of free will
versus determinism, whether the speaker in the poem
consciously decides to take the road that is far away
from the familiar road or only does so because he
doesn’t fancy the road with the bend in it. External
factors therefore make up his mind for him.
“The Road Not Taken” is all about what did not
happen: This person, faced with an important conscious
decision, chose the least popular, the path of most

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resistance. He was destined to go down one, regretted
not being able to take both, so he sacrificed one for the
other.
Ultimately, the reader is left to make up their own
mind about the emotional state of the speaker at the end.
Was the choice of the road less travelled a positive one?
Frost does not make it clear just what this difference is.
(8) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: Where does
Man’s Choice spring from? Free Will or Fate?
We are free to choose, but we do not really know
beforehand what we are choosing between. Our route is,
thus, determined by an increase of choice and chance,
and it is impossible to separate the two.
This poem does not advice. It does not say, “When
you come to a fork in the road, study the footprints and
take the road less travelled by.” Frost’s focus is more
complicated.
(9) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: Themes of "The
Road Not Taken"
 The Ambiguity and Uncertainty of Future
Choices
“The Road Not Taken” centers on the concept of
choice. The road that the speaker is walking on is
splitting in two directions, and he has to decide which
way to go. This road is not just in the woods, but also
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represents a decision in his life. Something in his life is
changing, forcing him to make a choice. He thinks one
way is better. Whether or not he has a reason why the
choice he makes is better, he has to take it. And that
choice changes his life.
In “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker's choice
functions as an extended metaphor for all the choices
that the speaker — and all people — must make in life.
Through the speaker's experience, the poem explores
the nature of choices, and what it means to be a person
forced to choose (as all people inevitably are).
The speaker does eventually choose a road based on
which one appears to have been less travelled, but the
poem shows that making that choice doesn't actually
solve the speaker's problem. Immediately after choosing
a road, the speaker admits that the two roads were
"worn... really about the same" and that both roads
"equally lay" without any leaves "trodden black" by
passers-by. So the speaker has tried to choose the road
that seemed less travelled, but couldn't tell which road
was actually less travelled. By making a choice, the
speaker will now never get the chance to experience the
other road and can never know which was less
travelled.
 Individual Choice and Nonconformity
The diverging roads may be read as being
an extended metaphor for two kinds of life choices in
━ 134 ━
general: the conventional versus the unconventional. By
choosing the less-travelled road over the well-travelled
path, the speaker suggests that he values individualism
over conformity.
Despite the speaker’s preference for nonconformity,
the poem ultimately remains ambiguous about whether
choosing the road “less travelled” necessarily leads to a
better or more interesting life. After choosing the road
that seems to have been less travelled, the speaker then
comments that, in fact, the two roads had been "worn ...
really about the same." The speaker seems to sense that
though he has attempted to take the road "less
travelled," there's no actual way to know if it was less
travelled.
 Fatalism overcomes Free Will
The poem’s central conflict arises when the speaker
encounters a crossroads. The first line tells of how “Two
roads diverged in a yellow wood,” a classic conceit ‫ تصور‬for
a life decision. The speaker then begins to weigh the two
options trying to select the better choice. However,
Frost’s poem makes the subversive (ruining) claim that
our choices are less real than we think. Our power to
distinguish meaningful differences is negligible—the
two roads are “as just as fair.” According to the poem,
fate continually guides us forward despite our attempts
to exercise free will.

━ 135 ━
 Choice without pre-information has no Meaning
In “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker must choose
between two roads without having complete
information about how they differ. Even after having
chosen the second road, the speaker is unable to
evaluate his experience, because the speaker cannot
know how things would have been different if he had
chosen the first road. In the final stanza, the speaker
imagines himself in the distant future looking back on
this choice. In this way, the poem engages not just with
a choice being made, but with the way that the speaker
interprets that choice and assigns its meaning after the
fact.
The poem implies that the speaker in the future may
look back and construct a narrative of his life and
evaluates his choice whether it made meaning or not.
Using this interpretation, the poem can be read as
commenting more broadly on how all people fictionalize
their lives by interpreting their choices, in hindsight
‫إدراك متأخر‬, as being more purposeful and meaningful
than they really are.
 Man and the Natural World
Throughout “The Road Not Taken,” nature is used
as a metaphor for the life of the speaker. The speaker
contextualizes (puts in context) a major decision by
writing about it as if it were something he encountered

━ 136 ━
while walking in a forest in the fall. This metaphor helps
us arrange our minds around the complexities of a
choice that will decide his future.
 Adventure and Exploration
“The Road Not Taken” embraces adventure and
exploration, suggesting that the only way to see what’s
beyond the bend in the road is to keep walking. The
speaker is out in the woods without a map, and he
doesn’t know which road to take. But instead of turning
tail and running back to where he came from, he
chooses a path and runs on, willing to face whatever
challenges that road may lead him to. He is attracted to
a road that might be less travelled, which suggests that
he likes to go where few people have gone before.
(10) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: The Mood and
Tone
The tone is meditative. As walker stands looking at the
two options, he is weighing the pros and cons in a quiet
and studied manner. The situation demands a serious
approach, for who knows what the outcome will be.
(11) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: Poetic Devices,
Symbolism and Imagery
 What is Poetic Devices?
Poetic devices are essential tools that a poet uses to
create rhythm, enhance a poem's meaning, or intensify

━ 137 ━
a mood or feeling. There are many types of poetic
devices that can be used to create a powerful,
memorable poem. They are literary devices such as
grammar, rhythm, structure, rhyme, imagery and
symbols that aid a poet in creating poetry.
The symbols in “The Road Not Taken” are the two
roads that the person must choose to take. They
represent two choices in the narrator's life that he must
decide between. He can pick one option, even though he
wishes that he could choose both. His choice to take the
lesser used path over the one that was potentially the
fairer shows that he wanted to take the path in life that
was morally correct. The road, itself, symbolizes the
journey of life, and the image of a road forking off into
two paths symbolizes a choice.
 Visual and Auditory Imagery
Imagery is very important in “The Road Not
Taken” because the narrator is describing the setting
for most of the poem. Much of the imagery is visual as
the person talks about the scenery. There is also a little
bit of auditory (sound) imagery when he sighs. The
paths that divide in the forest are portrayed as grassy,
fair, and about equally worn. The imagery contributes
a lot to the meaning of the poem because, without the
description of the forest and the paths, it wouldn’t make
sense that the narrator was indecisive about choosing a
certain path. Because both of the paths were said to be
━ 138 ━
not trodden, the reader can also understand that in the
end, the narrator will lie to people by telling them that
he "took the one less traveled by". The
autumn imagery is clear in this poem and we find out
that it is morning.
 Yellow Color Symbolism
As for color, Frost describes the forest as a “yellow
wood.” In the natural world, yellow is the color of
sunflowers ‫عبَّاد الشمس‬
َ , daffodils, lemons, canaries ‫عصافير‬
‫ الكناريا‬and bees. It’s the color of happiness, and
optimism, of enlightenment and creativity, sunshine and
spring. Yellow is the colour of traffic lights and signs
indicating caution all over the world. Concerning the
dark symbolism of yellow: cowardice, betrayal, egoism,
and madness. So, yellow can be considered a middle
colour, something in-between and unsure of itself. This
sets the mood of indecision that characterizes the
language of the poem.
 Roads symbolize journeys of life
Roads symbolize lifelines. They symbolize journeys of

life. The road is a place of both transience and danger.
As the speaker of this poem discusses, for every road we
take, there’s a road we don’t take. Wrong turn or not,
the roads we take can end up making significant
changes in our lives. And we'll always wonder about the
roads that we didn't try.

━ 139 ━
(12) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: Setting
The first line gives us the setting of the poem. The
speaker tells us the woods are yellow, so we can infer
that it’s autumn.
The setting of the poem is in a forest. The woods are
just yellow, and the speaker is on foot. The time is a
morning in autumn. The trees are turning colours, and
the leaves are falling. It’s probably quite pretty out, with
the crisp smell of autumn in the air.
(13) Frost “The Road Not Taken”: The Central
Message
The central message is that, in life, we are often
presented with choices. When making a choice, one is
required to make a decision. Viewing a choice as a fork
in a path, it becomes clear that we must choose one
direction or another, but not both.
The speaker chooses the road randomly and
declares himself happy because it has more grass and
not many folk have been down it. Anyway, he could
always return one day and try the “original” road again.
Would that be possible? Perhaps not, life has a way of
letting one thing leading to another until going
backwards is just no longer an option.
♣In Summary

━ 140 ━
Frost liked to warn his listeners, “You have to be
careful of the interpretation of this tricky poem—very
tricky.” In fact, the critic David Orr considered Frost’s
work “the most misread poem in America,” writing in
The Paris Review: “This is the kind of claim we make
when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by
assuming that our current position is the product of our
own choices… The poem is a commentary on the self-
deception we practice when constructing the story of
our own lives.”
The road splitting in the woods is a metaphor for a
choice. Wherever the speaker’s life has taken him so far,
he has come to the point where he needs to make a
choice that takes him down one path and precludes him
from taking the other. The description of the road is
a metaphor for the future. Every choice is a decision
that leads to consequences.
 2) Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)

Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, on October
30, 1885. He completed two years of college at the
University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from
Hamilton College in 1905.
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate
American poet and critic, a major figure in the early
modernist poetry movement. Pound’s contribution to
poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in
━ 141 ━
developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision
and economy of language. Ezra Pound was an early
champion of a number of avant-garde and Modernist
poets, developed important channels of intellectual and
aesthetic exchange between the United States and
Europe, and contributed to important literary
movements.
Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most
responsible for defining and promoting a Modernist
aesthetic in poetry. Pound’s own significant
contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation
of Imagism, a movement in poetry that derived its
technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry—
stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language,
and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to,
━ 142 ━
in Pound’s words, “compose in the sequence of the
musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.”
His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the
encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos.
Pound published books include A lume spento (1908),
Exultations (1909), Personae (1909), Provenca (1910), Canzoni
(1911), Lustra and Other Poems (1917), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
(1920), Umbra: Collected Poems (1920), Cantos I–XVI (1925), A
Draft of XXX Cantos (1930), Homage to Sextus Propertius
(1934), The Fifth Decade of Cantos (1937), Cantos LII-LXXI
(1940), The Pisan Cantos (1948), Patria Mia (1950), and The
Cantos (1972).
(1) Poem: “The Garden” by Ezra Pound

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
And roundabout there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.

━ 143 ━
“The Garden” by Ezra Pound is one of the most
important poems of Modernism, if only because the poet
was so influential, others were likely to pay heed and
follow. “The Garden” is a clever representation of
English society, capturing the backbone of England’s
peculiar caste system in the early 20th century. The
poem’s title and the line “They shall inherit the earth”
suggest a Garden of Eden in which the “fall” is due to
class pride and bigotry. Many modernists detested
government and authority and were afraid because of
what they did not know. This is a theme that can be seen
in this poem as the speaker is “afraid” and there is a
discomfort present throughout the poem.
“The Garden” by Ezra Pound describes the emotional
conflict caused by changes in the upper and lower
classes of England during the ending months of
WWI. “The Garden” by Ezra Pound is set within the
gardens of Kensington, a traditionally wealthy upper-
class neighborhood that is home to Kensington Palace.
The poem was published in 1917, only months before
the end of World War I. The War would leave in
indelible mark on English society and Pound depicts the
beginnings of social change in only twelve lines of
poetry.
(2) Pound’s The Garden: Summary of “The
Garden”

━ 144 ━
“The Garden” begins with the introduction of a
wealthy woman who is walking through Kensington
Gardens. She is extremely graceful, like “loose silk,” but
within her is a conflict. She is dying in the world she lives
in, the rules of society, and her life of manners, is
breaking her “piece-meal” and draining her of human
emotion.
She is moving through “The Garden”and passes a
“rabble” of poor children. These “infants” are dirty and
described as being “unkillable.” They are stronger than
the upper classes, certainly stronger than this woman,
and will one day “inherit the earth.”
Pound saw a change coming in society and his speaker is
well aware of the conflict that it is creating within this
unnamed woman. The speaker can see that she, in one
way, wants to be spoken to, but in another, is fearful of
that event occurring. She knows it would be an
“indiscretion” opposed by her family. She wants to
reach out to the poor on the streets but is not quite brave
enough yet.
(3) Pound’s The Garden: Analysis
Lines 1-4
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall

She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
━ 145 ━
This deeply interesting poem begins with the speaker
painting a picture of a woman. This woman is from the
upper echelons of society and she is walking through the
gardens of Kensington. The speaker is watching the way
she moves through the landscape. He speaks of her body
through a simile, it is moving like, “a skien,” or a
collection of loose strings, that are being “blown against
a wall.” She moves gently, and gracefully through the
landscape and clearly belongs there, but there is
something hindering her complete freedom of
movement, the wall.
This wall is more than just a part of the scenery it is a
representation of the division between the upper levels
of society and the lower. She is lightly battering it, and
as will be expanded on later, making a halfhearted,
unconsidered, attempt to see what life is like on the
other side.
The woman is walking along a particular path in “The
Garden” that is enclosed by a railing. This railing allows
the woman to see the other side of life but also keeps her
separate from it. She is kept out, and the poor are kept
in.
She actively tries, just like the others of her class do, to
forget entirely about the lower classes. The way she was
taught to behave and the sense of being her family gave
her, is her compass. But this way of living is dying. She
is being broken apart into different pieces of herself,
━ 146 ━
mentally, socially, and emotionally. She has looked at
the other side of the wall and it has changed her.
It is as if something was opened inside her mind that
finally allowed her to see the world more clearly. She is
not finished changing and will still have to fight against
her own upbringing if she is to improve her moral
character.
Lines 5-9
And round about there is a rabble

(…)
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
The reader is now given a glimpse of what is on the other
side of “the wall.” All around this area, in Kensington,
where the woman is walking, are poor children. They
are described as moving in a group, a “rabble” or
disorderly crowd. These simple words that Pound
provides show the modern reader, who is very far away
from England of 1917, what it was like to see the poor
from the perspective of someone who lived there.
The speaker goes on to speak of the hardiness of these
children. They may be “dirty,” but they are also so
“sturdy” they seem to be “unkillable.” Pound also chose
to use the word “infant” rather than children. This will
increase the sympathy the reader feels for these kids
while also emphasizing the fact that they are, in fact,
children, they did not ask for this life.
━ 147 ━
The use of the word “unkillable” in this stanza can be
taken in two different ways. It is an apt way to describe
the kid’s ability to survive, but it also speaks to the way
that many will have seen these children. It is as if they
are unable to die, they are always there, and always
appear to be sickly, hungry, and “filthy.” Nothing can
destroy them.
These children, who are so opposite from the Lords of
the ruling class, are said by the speaker to be in line to
“inherit the earth.” Pound is quoting from the Bible,
from Matthew 5:5 in which Jesus is giving the Sermon
on the Mount. He says, according to the King James
Version of the Bible, “Blessed are the meek: / for they
shall inherit the earth.”
The world is changing and the ruling class will no longer
have the endless, and unquestioned power, over the
state of England that they do. The poor, hopeless, and
“unkillable” will become the next leaders of Britain.
This change is coming for them, but another is coming
for the “woman” and all others like her.
She is a representation of all the other women of her
class that are bored with the lives they are living. This
boredom is not used to help others but grows and grows
until it is excessive and overwhelming. “Breeding” is
used here to refer to the way she was raised, and to the
way that she will “breed,” or give birth and raise her

━ 148 ━
own children. The world is changing and “breeding”
will not always be considered a sanctified act.
Lines 10- 12
She would like some one to speak to her,

And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
In the final three lines or tercet, of the poem, the poet
expands on the emotions inside the woman’s head and
introduces the speaker, in the first person, into the
narrative.
The narrator speaks for himself for the first time now
and as he considers the woman he sees that it is as if she
wants someone to speak to her, but not, at the same time.
This is part of her internal conflict in which she wants
to change, but her ideas of what is socially right or
wrong is not allowing her to.
The speaker knows that he could be the one to approach
her, but he also knows, as she looks at him, that she is
scared he will do just that. It would be an “indiscretion.”
It would breach the societal rules that the woman holds
so dear. While a change may be coming to the world, it
is approaching slowly, and with extreme caution.

━ 149 ━
 3. Langston Hughes (1901 - 1967)
James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1,
1901, in Joplin, Missouri. James Mercer Langston
Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist,
playwright, and columnist. His parents divorced when
he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico.
He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen,
when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his
mother and her husband, before the family eventually
settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln that Hughes
began writing poetry.
Langston Hughes
His first published poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers.
Hughes argued, “no great poet has ever been afraid of
being himself.”
━ 150 ━
"We younger Negro artists now intend to express
our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or
shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If
they aren't, it doesn't matter. We know we are
beautiful. And ugly too... If colored people are leased
we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't
matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as
strong as we know how and we stand on the top of
the mountain, free within ourselves. (Langston Hughes’s
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (June 23, 1926))
Hughes’ travels ranged to such diverse locations as

Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, the Belgian Congo,
Angola, and Guinea in Africa; to Italy, France, Russia
and Spain. Whether abroad, or at home in the US,
Hughes loved to sit in the clubs listening to blues, jazz
and writing poetry. A ‘new rhythm’ emerged in his
writing, as evidenced by his collection of poems, “The
Weary Blues”.
He wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three
collections of short stories, four volumes of "editorial"
and "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's
poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a
dozen radio and television scripts and dozens of
magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven
anthologies. The long and distinguished list of Hughes'
works includes: Not Without Laughter (1930); The Big
Sea (1940); I Wonder As I Wander (1956), his
autobiographies. His collections of poetry include: The
━ 151 ━
Weary Blues (1926); The Negro Mother and other
Dramatic Recitations (1931); The Dream Keeper (1932);
Shakespeare In Harlem (1942); Fields of Wonder (1947);
One Way Ticket (1947); The First Book of Jazz (1955);
Tambourines To Glory (1958); and Selected Poems
(1959); The Best of Simple (1961). He edited several
anthologies in an attempt to popularize black authors
and their works. Some of these are: An African Treasury
(1960); Poems from Black Africa (1963); New Negro
Poets: USA (1964) and The Best Short Stories by Negro
Writers (1967).
Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate
cancer on May 22, 1967, in New York City. In his
memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem
has been given landmark status by the New York City
Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has
been renamed “Langston Hughes Place.”
(1) Langston Hughes’ Poem: “Let America Be
America Again”
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
━ 152 ━
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
━ 153 ━
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
━ 154 ━
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine--the poor man's, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
━ 155 ━
(2) Langston Hughes’ Let America be America:
Summary
His poem "Let America Be America Again" (1936) was
written during the Great Depression. It is an eloquently
written piece that reminds readers of the progress
needed to achieve the vision that is America. Although
written almost 100 years ago, "Let America Be America
Again" retains its relevancy and has a timeless message
for today's audience.
"Let America Be America Again" uses first-person
point of view where the speaker serves as a voice for all
the under-represented racial, ethnic, and socio-
economic groups in American society. The poetic voice
catalogs the poor white class, African-Americans,
Native Americans, and immigrants.
The poetic voice expresses the perspective of the
minority groups who have worked tirelessly to achieve
the American Dream, only to discover it is unattainable
for them. Their work and contributions have been
instrumental in America becoming a land of
opportunity and have helped other members of
American society thrive. However, the speaker notes the
American dream is reserved for others and refers to
them as "leeches" (line 66) who live off the sweat, labor,
and blood of others.

━ 156 ━
Themes
 The Failure and Breakdown of the American
Dream
“Let America Be America Again” highlights the
discrepancy between the ideals of the American Dream
and the harsh realities of American life. The speaker
argues that the United States has not yet fulfilled its
promised vision of freedom and equality for all people.
The speaker describes several counterexamples to the
American Dream, notably the experiences of black
Americans, the working poor, Native Americans, and
immigrants. The speaker argues that all of these
marginalized groups have experienced "the same old
stupid plan / Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak."
Thus, the speaker implies that American society is not
special; rather, it has perpetuated the same systems of
oppression and exploitation as the nations that came
before it. By exploring the experiences of oppressed
groups, the speaker demonstrates how the idealistic
image of America erases communities that have been
disadvantaged since the United States was established.
It is clear, however, that the American Dream will not
survive if exploitative labor and greed continue to
prevail. When the speaker is describing groups who
have been failed by the American Dream, there is

━ 157 ━
mention of "the man who never got ahead / The poorest
worker bartered through the years." This image of the
worker who never progresses up the socioeconomic
ladder demonstrates how exploitation directly
contradicts the promise of the American Dream: that is,
that anyone who is willing to work hard can get ahead
and create a better life for themselves. Instead, the poor
are likely to remain poor, treated as disposable currency
that can be "bartered" or exchanged indefinitely
between various employers. The speaker contends that
this system, which treats workers as commodities rather
than human beings, has been pivotal in preventing the
realization of the American Dream.
The speaker concludes with a call to action, proclaiming
"From those who live like leeches on the people's lives /
We must take back our land again, America!" The
speaker thus encourages the oppressed groups to rise up
and reinvent America in the vision of freedom and
equality for all. The speaker ends the poem with a new
promise that "America will be!" and notes that it is not
too late for America to achieve its founding ideals.
 Oppression and Inequality in the United States
Langston Hughes expressed the inequality present in
American society during the time he was writing.
Hughes saw the conditions African-Americans suffered
during the Great Depression. In an isolated society,
African-Americans worked the hardest jobs for the
━ 158 ━
lowest pay. When individuals were laid off, African-
Americans were the first to lose their jobs. In public
assistance and relief programs, they often received less
than their white American counterparts.
In “Let America Be America Again,” Hughes analyzes
the complex relationship between oppression and the
American Dream. After conveying the traditional
narrative of the American Dream in the opening
stanzas—as the promise of opportunity and freedom for
all—the speaker presents a counter-narrative through
the eyes of marginalized groups in American history .
The speaker goes on to describe the oppressed as "the
one who dreamt our basic dream," suggesting that the
American Dream has failed the people who not only
believed in it the most, but who made its inception
possible. Thus oppression in the United States takes on
a new disturbing dimension; not only is oppression
incompatible with the ideals of the American Dream,
but it disproportionately impacts the same groups that
were inspired by that very "dream" to create America
in the first place.
 Greed, Class, and Labor
The speaker directly connects the failure of the
American Dream to live up to its potential to the
American obsession with profit and greed. This is fitting
given that, as previously noted in this guide, Hughes

━ 159 ━
wrote the poem during the Great Depression, at a time
when labor movements sought more rights and
protections for American workers. The speaker of the
poem presents these workers as toiling away on behalf
of an upper class that exploits the labor of the masses
for their own personal gain. This practice is antithetical
to American ideals of freedom and opportunity, the
poem argues, because it has essentially made workers
slaves to their labor.
The speaker makes this reference to draw a parallel
between the oppression of serfs and the living conditions
of working-class Americans, despite the fact that the
latter are supposedly part of a more progressive "New
World."
The speaker repeatedly criticizes the selfishness and
greed of the upper class—and points out how this is
totally incompatible with the ideals behind the
American Dream. The United States was founded as a
place "Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme /
That any man be crushed by one above." In other
words, America is supposed to be a country free from
dictators or monarchs whose main concern is
preserving their own power at the expense of the masses
over which they rule.
People believe America is a place of "hope," the speaker
says, yet when they arrive they find that the same old
systems of oppression—of "dog eat dog," rich vs.
━ 160 ━
poor—are playing out. The “young man” who wants to
establish himself in America is thus instead subject to
“that ancient endless chain / Of profit, power, gain, of
grab the land! / Of grab the gold! ... Of owning
everything for one’s own greed!” In other words,
America has simply recreated an endless, age-old cycle
in which the lower classes are exploited by the
greediness of those above them. American society is
driven by "greed" and "profit"—not liberty and justice
for all.
Tone
The overall tone in "Let America Be America Again" is
angry and indignant. However, several poetic shifts in
the poem lead to the concluding anger expressed and
show the evolution of the rage in response to the social
conditions in America.
Literary Devices
Besides the structure and key diction choices, Hughes
utilizes central literary devices to convey themes of
inequality and the breakdown of the American Dream.
Refrain: A refrain is a word, line, part of a line, or group
of lines repeated in the course of a poem, often with
slight changes.

━ 161 ━
Langston Hughes uses refrains throughout the poem to
enhance the meaning by showing consistency in the
ideas, giving the poem a cohesive feeling, and revealing
the issue in American culture and with the American
Dream.
Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant
sound at the beginning of words close to each other
when reading,
Hughes uses alliteration to draw attention to ideas and
emphatically express an emotion. The repeated hard
"g" sound in "gain," "grab," "gold," and "greed"
highlight the voracity with which people search for
riches only to satisfy their own selfishness. Hughes is
showing the imbalance between those that need and
those that have. The hard "g" sound is aggressive,
audibly reflecting the aggression the oppressed
individuals in society feel.
Metaphor: A metaphor is a figure of speech that offers
a direct comparison between two unlike objects not
using the words "like" or "as." One object is often
concrete and represents the traits or characteristics of a
more abstract idea, emotion, or concept.
Hughes uses metaphor in "Let America Be America
Again" to show how the search for the American Dream
has disproportionately trapped some individuals.

━ 162 ━
This metaphor compares the speaker's situation in
America to a tangled chain. Manipulated by the system
meant to provide an opportunity for advancement, the
speaker sees no escape from the "endless chain" (line
26). Rather, the search for "profit" and "power" keeps
him shackled
 4. Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014)

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St.
Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. She grew up in St.
Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. She is an author, poet,
historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and
screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil
rights activist. Among her volumes of poetry are A
Brave and Startling Truth (Random House, 1995), The
Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994),
Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993),
Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), I Shall Not Be Moved
(1990), Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? (1983), Oh Pray
My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), and Just Give
Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), which was
nominated for the Pulitzer prize.
From 1961 to 1962 Maya Angelou was associate editor

of The Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt, the only English-
language news weekly in the Middle East, and from
1964 to 1966 she was feature editor of the African
Review in Accra, Ghana. She returned to the U.S. in
━ 163 ━
1974 and was appointed by Gerald Ford to the
Bicentennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to
the Commission for International Woman of the Year.
She accepted a lifetime appointment in 1981 as
Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest
University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 1993,
Angelou wrote and delivered a poem, "On The Pulse of
the Morning," at the inauguration for President Bill
Clinton at his request.
Maya Angelou
(1) Maya Angelou’s Poem “Phenomenal Woman”

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
━ 164 ━
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.
━ 165 ━
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand

Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
━ 166 ━
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
(2) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman:
Introduction
What is it that makes a woman beautiful? What is it that
makes a woman powerful? Is it her eyes, her smile, her
confidence, her stride, or her mystery? In the poem
'Phenomenal Woman,' Maya Angelou (1928‐2014)
articulates that all of these things lend to a woman's
beautiful and powerful nature. Maya Angelou's poem is
an anthem of female empowerment that explores the
theme of womanhood not through the lens of popular
beauty trends, but rather through the inner strength
and power of women that reflects itself outwardly and
is magnetically attractively.
“Phenomenal Woman” is a poem written for all women,
but particularly represents Angelou's experience as a
black woman in the United States of America.
Understanding the conventional white standards of
beauty and racial prejudices in 20th century America
adds additional meaning to Maya Angelou's declaration
of her confidence in her beauty and power as a black
woman.

━ 167 ━
Summary
The speaker of the poem delights in her self-proclaimed
status as a “phenomenal woman.” The speaker refers to
an elusive “secret” about herself that conventionally
attractive women struggle to understand. She explains
that she doesn’t look like the models glorified by the
fashion industry, and that when she stars to reveal her
secret these other women don't believe her. The speaker
claims that her beauty is manifested in her wide hips,
her confident gait, and her smile. She's an
extraordinary woman. When you think of an
extraordinary woman, that’s the speaker.
Whenever the speaker calmly walks into a room, every
single man present desperately competes for her
attention. These men are drawn to the speaker, buzzing
around her like honey bees. This is because her passion
for life manifests in her physical appearance—in her
flashing eyes, her vibrant smile, the way her waist sways
as she walks, and the happy lightness in her step. She
again declares that she's an extraordinary woman.
When you think of an extraordinary woman, that's the
speaker.
Men have also asked themselves what it is about the
speaker that makes her so attractive. But no matter how
hard they try to pin down the speaker’s mysterious
appeal, they can't come close. Even when she tries to
━ 168 ━
reveal her secret to these men, they just don't get it. The
speaker says that her beauty exists in the way she carries
herself—in her confident posture; her bright, sunny
smile; the shape of her breasts; and her elegant
style. She’s an extraordinary woman. When you think
of an extraordinary woman, that’s the speaker.
This, the speaker says, is why she insists on moving
throughout the world confidently and boldly. She
doesn’t have to overcompensate in any way or prove
herself to anyone. In fact, when other women see the
speaker, they should be inspired to be more confident
themselves. The speaker's appeal exists in the way she
struts in heels, in the way her hair falls, in the way she
holds out her hands, in the way others want her to care
for them. She’s an extraordinary woman. When you
think of an extraordinary woman, that's the speaker.
Analysis
In the first stanza, she establishes that other women
notice her and wonder just what makes her so
attractive. The speaker elaborates that she does not fit
the stereotypical view of a "cute" woman or possess the
physique of a model. Nonetheless, other women are
intrigued and want to know the secret to her powerful
presence. The speaker describes the unique physical
characteristics that give her such allure and points out
that women never believe her when she gives her
━ 169 ━
reasons. No matter what these women think and despite
their possible jealousy, the speaker proclaims proudly
that she is a “phenomenal woman”—exquisite to the
point that other women are cynical about her beauty.
In the second stanza, the speaker describes her effect
on men. She details her powerful sensuality and calm
sense of confidence, illustrating through metaphor how
these men are drawn to her immediately because of
these traits. Once again, she explains how her unique
physical features and her mannerisms are the secret to
her being such a phenomenal woman.
In the third stanza, the speaker elaborates further on
her interactions with men. She explains that, like
women, many men are baffled by her allure and wonder
why they are so drawn to her. The speaker suggests that
there are actually two sides to her beauty—the physical
being that everyone sees, and an inner beauty that is
untouchable. This inner beauty is what makes her so
invincible and confident, as it is unique and could never
be replicated through dress or makeup. The speaker
explains that the men are blind to her inner beauty and
cannot see or understand even when she tries to show
them. The men therefore perceive beauty superficially,
and the speaker coolly rejoices in her ability to please
them while remaining a mysterious female who marches
to the beat of her own drum.

━ 170 ━
In the fourth stanza, the speaker addresses the listener
directly and explains that her previous recollections
justify her continued confidence. The listener should be
able to better understand her power as a woman and be
proud of the speaker for attracting attention while
remaining subtle and calm. The speaker once again
highlights both her physical characteristics and her
confident attitude, repeating at the end her affirmation
that she is indeed a phenomenal woman.
Character List
 1. The speaker
The speaker is a confident, self-aware woman who
delights in her beauty. She remarks that everywhere she
goes, both men and women are in awe of her yet fail to
comprehend her allure. She has a bewitching effect on
everyone. Women are determined to know the secret to
her appeal, and men are drawn to her sensuality.
However, the speaker reveals that her inner beauty is
what makes her radiate such a powerful aura. She is a
phenomenal woman, in that both her physical and inner
beauty are remarkable to the point that others can
hardly believe it.
 2. Men
Men are entranced by the speaker’s beauty and are
attracted to her sexually. They find her irresistible,
━ 171 ━
however—like the women—they cannot determine just
what it is about the speaker that makes her so appealing.
The speaker explains that she has a beauty within that
men cannot touch. Furthermore, when she tries to show
that beauty—who she is as a person—they fail to see it.
It is suggested that men are only capable of seeing
beauty superficially; even if they are attracted to women
who do not fit a certain model of beauty, they are not
wise enough to understand why.
 3. Women
In the poem, women are depicted as incredulous of the
speaker’s beauty. Women recognize that the speaker
does not possess the beauty and physique of a fashion
model but nonetheless find her stunning. The speaker
explains that when she tries to tell these women the
secret to her powerful presence, they do not believe her.
They are unable to accept the idea that beauty does not
have to fit a stereotype, and it is implied that they are
jealous of the speaker because they lack her qualities.
 4. The listener/reader
The listener is addressed in the last stanza of the poem
and may be considered any man or woman who might
care to listen to the speaker’s feelings. Once the speaker
completes her description of her physical attributes and
character traits, she tells the reader that these qualities
justify her confident attitude. She knows she is a

━ 172 ━
phenomenal woman and tells the listener—and
essentially the world—that they should be proud of her
for being who she is.
(6) Themes of Phenomenal Woman
 Theme of Womanhood and Female power
The poem as a whole celebrates female power. The
speaker is a highly confident woman who revels in both
her physical and inner beauty. She knows that her
qualities make her very powerful, as she attracts the
attention of both men and women and baffles them with
her exquisite aura. She has power over men in both a
sexual and intellectual sense, as they find her alluring
but fail to really see her inner beauty. She is also more
powerful than other women who may disregard her
beauty out of jealousy and act petty toward her.
The speaker of “Phenomenal Woman” shows sexual
energy in a way that proves equally mysterious and
powerful. She references this sexual energy most clearly
in the poem’s second stanza, where she describes how
men can’t resist her:
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.

━ 173 ━
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
In this passage (lines 14–20), the speaker likens men to
a swarm of bees, buzzing around her as if she were the
queen of a honey hive. The metaphor of the honey hive
has a strongly sexual connotation. Indeed, honey often
appears as a symbol for female sexuality, and
particularly for female genitalia. In this case, then, the
male bees swarm around their queen in a frenzy of
irrepressible sexual energy. The speaker references this
sexual energy elsewhere in the poem, albeit more subtly.
Specifically, the speaker locates the source of her sexual
allure in the way she embodies her femininity. It lies in
“the span of [her] hips” (line 7) and “the curl of [her]
lips” (line 9), she says in stanza 1. Later, she locates the
source in “the arch of [her] back” (line 38) and “the ride
of [her] breasts” (line 40). Through all these examples,
the speaker makes a case for the power of her sexuality.
 Theme of Individuality
The poem is also a testament to one’s individuality. The
speaker does not fit the standard conventions of beauty
and rejoices in her uniqueness. She suggests that both
her physical characteristics and her personality are
what make her phenomenal. She is proud of the fact that
men cannot touch her “inner mystery”—the qualities
that make up her personality and make her so
special. Women cannot replicate her beauty either, as
━ 174 ━
the speaker’s inner beauty is unique. The poem
therefore celebrates the individuality of all human
beings.
 Theme of Beauty and Self-Acceptance
“Phenomenal Woman” challenges restrictive notions of
feminine beauty. The speaker rejects narrow societal
beauty standards, and insists instead that real beauty
comes from a place of self-confidence and self-
acceptance.
The speaker opens the poem by referencing the “secret”
to her appeal. She explains that though she is “not cute
or built to suit a fashion model’s size,” she still possesses
a unique, mysterious allure. She calls this “her inner
mystery”—something that no one can precisely define
or identify, but that everyone can perceive on some
level.
On the one hand, the speaker explicitly rejects narrow
physical ideals of feminine beauty. For instance, she
says her beauty lies in things like “the reach of my arms
/ The span of my hips.” She's not a tiny, wispy fashion
model, but that doesn't mean she's not attractive.
Even more importantly, the speaker repeatedly insists
that her beauty lies in the way she carries herself—in
her self-assured "stride," her bright smile, her grace,
and her bold posture. All these things make her a
"phenomenal woman"—that is, an extraordinary,
━ 175 ━
spectacular woman. The speaker thus argues that true
beauty stems from loving yourself, rather than trying to
meet a certain standard and then feeling bad about
yourself when you can't.
Indeed, the speaker declares that such self-acceptance is
exactly what makes her so irresistible. Whenever she
enters a room, she says men “swarm around" her like a
"hive of honey bees," drawn to her passion for life and
unconditional self-love. She describes the “fire in [her]
eyes” and the “joy in [her] feet” as being part of her
allure, further supporting the idea that her
attractiveness comes from her refusal to feel let society
fill her with any sort of shame about who she is or what
she looks like.
Whereas society may expect women to be meek,
demure, and apologetic about their supposed
imperfections, the speaker refuses to belittle herself. As
she says in the final stanza, “Now you understand / Just
why my head’s not bowed,” concluding that beauty is
born out of radical self-acceptance and the self-
confidence that results from it.
What is more, she says that her example out to make her
audience "proud." In other words, other women should
find inspiration in the speaker’s confidence. Though the
poem never addresses race specifically, the fact that
Angelou was a black woman writing when societal

━ 176 ━
standards of beauty were often inextricable from
whiteness adds another powerful angle to this message.
Ultimately, the poem says that instead of conforming to
the standards set by society, women should reconnect
with their own value and find validation from within.
All women are capable of being “phenomenal,” the
poem implies, if they embrace who they are instead of
trying to fit in with arbitrary social standards. In fact,
the poem suggests that accepting and loving yourself is,
in itself, an extraordinary act within a society that
promotes insecurity and self-loathing in women. It is
this step towards unconditional self-love that makes a
woman truly phenomenal.
 Theme of Sense of pride, confidence, and
self-worth
Throughout the poem, the speaker presents herself with
an evident sense of pride, confidence, and self-worth.
Those around her wonder where her confidence comes
from, particularly considering that she doesn’t fit the
conventional profile for female attractiveness. The
speaker herself acknowledges that she isn’t
conventionally pretty: “I’m not cute or built to suit a
fashion model’s size” (line 2). Even so, she understands
that physical beauty isn’t the only—or even the
primary—source of attractiveness. More important
than a person’s physical form alone is how a
person inhabits their form. By liberating herself from
━ 177 ━
socially imposed perspectives on female beauty, the
speaker feels less constrained and more playful in how
she carries herself. As she unleashes herself and allows
herself to fully embody her femininity, she notices the
positive attention she gets from men and women alike.
This attention creates a feedback loop that she finds
deeply empowering. Not only does it feel empowering to
her personally, but she also hopes to empower others. In
the final stanza, she says:
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
In other words (lines 46–51), the speaker’s self-

acceptance endows her with a self-confidence that she
wants to make accessible to others as well.
 Theme of Cultural/societal stereotypes
The poem addresses the definition of beauty as defined
by society. The speaker explains that she does not
resemble a “fashion model”; she therefore does not
adhere to what society deems beautiful. While race is
not explicitly mentioned in the poem, one can also
surmise that Angelou is also referring to cultural
stereotypes of African-American women. As Angelou is
writing from her personal experience, she is actually
━ 178 ━
describing what it feels like to be a phenomenal black
woman. As the men and women depicted in the poem
look at her curiously, it may be argued that some of
these stares come from white people who judge the
physical attributes of an African-American person.
The poem is opened with the declaration that the
speaker does not fit the beauty standards of society.
However, this does not deter her from being confident
nor from being perceived as beautiful. While society
often turns to physical and superficial means to define a
woman's beauty, Angelou explains that this physical
beauty is a manifestation of a woman's inner strength
and confidence.
 Theme of The Difference Between Prettiness
and Beauty
In the opening lines of “Phenomenal Woman,” the
speaker draws a broad distinction between shallowly
conventional ideas of prettiness and a more deeply
substantive notion of beauty. The speaker makes this
distinction implicitly when she says, in the first line,
“Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.” With
these words, the speaker excludes herself from the
category of “pretty women,” and she confirms this
conclusion in the following line: “I’m not cute or built
to suit a fashion model’s size.” These lines set up an
opposition between conventional prettiness and some
other form of attractiveness, which has a “secret”
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source. Conventional prettiness is defined solely by
physical appearance. It’s precisely because the speaker
isn’t skinny like a fashion model that the “pretty
women” feel baffled by her evident allure. In contrast to
the shallow convention of prettiness, the speaker
emphasizes the way she carries herself. She embodies
her femininity in a uniquely animated way that draws
the attention of men and women alike. It is this deeper
source of attractiveness that the speaker celebrates
throughout the poem. Though she uses the word
“phenomenal” to describe her embodiment of
femininity, we could also refer to it as an authentic form
of beauty that stands in contrast to shallow ideas
of prettiness.
(7) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Speaker
or Narrator, and Point of View
We can take the speaker to be Maya Angelou, speaking
in the first person and describing her experiences as an
empowered woman. She also addresses an unspecified
listener (presumably the reader), telling this
person/these people that they should be proud of the
phenomenal woman she is.
(8) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Form
and Meter
The poem is free verse. It does not follow a consistent
meter or rhyme scheme, but there are numerous uses of

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rhyme throughout the poem that establish a musical,
rhythmic tone. The refrain follows an A-B-A-B rhyme
scheme.
(9) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Poetic
Devices
 Metaphors and Similes
"The sun of my smile" (metaphor) - The speaker's smile
is depicted as glowing and warm, like the sun. She
radiates beauty and light, just as the sun does.
"Then they swarm around me, / A hive of honey bees"
(metaphor) - The men who are attracted to the speaker
surround her the way honey bees are drawn to honey.
She is sweet like honey, and she is also powerful like a
queen bee commanding the attention of the other bees.
"The fire in my eyes" (metaphor) - The speaker's eyes
have a hypnotizing effect on men. There is an energy
that radiates from her eyes that may be deemed sensual.
"The joy in my feet" (metaphor) - The speaker walks
through life joyfully and in a carefree manner.
 Alliteration and Assonance
“Pretty women wonder where” (alliteration) - The "w"
consonant is repeated heavily, creating a musical and
somewhat breathy sound that mimics a woman's allure.

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“The stride of my step” (alliteration) - The "s"
consonant creates a happy tone, reflecting the speaker's
joy.
“A hive of honey bees” (alliteration) - The "h"
consonant has a breathy sound that mimics the appeal
of the speaker.
“The sun of my smile” (alliteration) - The "s" consonant
once again creates a pleasant tone, as the words roll off
the tongue.
“It’s the fire in my eyes” (assonance) - The words "fire,"
"my," and "eyes" all contain long "i" vowel sounds that
give weight to the words. The line is very powerful as a
result.
“smile” and “style” (assonance) - The long "i" vowel
sound is very weighty here, giving power to the speaker.
“hips” and “lips” (assonance, alliteration, and rhyme) -
These rhyming words suggest sassiness and allure with
the the short "i" vowel sound and the "ps" consonant
sound at the end that sound like a snake's hiss. The
speaker is like a snake charmer, charming the men.
“lies” and “size” (assonance, alliteration, and rhyme) -
The long "i" vowel sound in these two words as well as
the "z" sound create a sassy tone.
“please,” “knees,” and “bees” (assonance, alliteration,
and rhyme) - The long "e" vowel sound and the "z"
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consonant sound roll off the tongue and reflect the
speaker's carefree nature.
 Foreshadowing
Up until the final stanza, the speaker tells the story of
her life without addressing anyone in particular. In the
final stanza, she addresses the listener for the first time
and suggests that she will always continue to be a
phenomenal woman, as she is such a person "now" and
therefore always will be.
 Allusions
The speaker alludes to society's definition of beauty by
explaining how she does not fit the build of a "fashion
model." This may also be a covert reference to racism,
as the speaker (Angelou) is a black woman and people
may be judging her through this lens.
 Metonymy and Synecdoche
"My inner mystery" (metonymy) - The inner mystery
stands for the inner qualities that are invisible to the eye
and make up the speaker's personality. These traits may
include her intelligence and wit as well as her hopes,
dreams, and passions.
"Flash of my teeth" (metonymy) - This phrase refers to
the speaker's bright smile.

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"where my secret lies" (metonymy) - The secret refers
to the source of the speaker's power as a phenomenal
woman. Women want to know what she does to make
herself so beautiful.
(10) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Irony
The entire poem makes references to the fact that the
speaker is a phenomenal woman despite lacking
stereotypically beautiful qualities. Pretty women look at
her and still cannot understand why they lack what she
has, and the irony is that they are supposed to be
prettier than her. Men also find themselves falling for
her quickly, despite the fact that they cannot identify
what it is that makes her so alluring. Both sexes are in
awe of the speaker's unique beauty, despite the fact that
she contradicts everything they have ever learned in
society about beauty.
(11) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Genre
Autobiographical poetry, African-American poetry,
feminist poetry.
(12) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Tone
Confident, in that the speaker is certain of her worth
and beauty as a phenomenal woman. Sensual, in that
the speaker also recognizes her appeal to men and
knows the way they desire her. Jubilant, in that the
speaker celebrates female empowerment and rejoices in

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the fact that she is a happy and dignified woman worthy
of respect.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the speaker, describing her place in
life as a phenomenal woman who is uninhibited by the
jealousy of women or blindness of men. The antagonists
are men and other women, as they judge her and leer at
her as much as they revel in her beauty.
(14) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Conflict
The speaker cannot make other women and men
understand why she is special. They fail to comprehend
what makes her beautiful, as they have been schooled in
traditional definitions of beauty and charm and listen to
societal and cultural stereotypes. One might also argue
that these people are also in awe of seeing a black
woman who is so beautiful, suggesting underlying notes
of racism.
(15) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Climax
The climax occurs in the final stanza when the speaker
addresses the listener for the first time. The speaker
reveals that all of her recollections have led up to the
present moment when she declares that she can be a
phenomenal woman without trying to draw attention to
herself or fitting stereotypes.

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(16) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s
major themes.
 “Phenomenal”
Phenomenal is a key word in Angelou’s poem. Most
obviously, it’s a part of the poem’s title, but it also
appears several times throughout the text itself. In fact,
the word appears eight times in the poem, two times
each in the refrain that closes every stanza (lines 10–13,
26–29, 42–45, and 57–60):
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
The word “phenomenal” has two meanings, and the
speaker references both. On the one hand, the word
refers to the appearances of things and to our
perception of them. This is the word’s technical
definition, which the speaker references by insisting
that folks who don’t understand the source of her allure
need only look at the way she carries herself. Her way
of embodying femininity is an observable phenomenon
that others can perceive if only they open their eyes. On
the other hand, phenomenal can be used as a synonym
for “remarkable” or “exceptional.” This is the word’s
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more colloquial meaning, and it has a strong,
celebratory connotation. The speaker references this
meaning of the word in the overall pride of her tone. She
also references it in her implication that, contrary to
women who are merely “pretty” (line 1), she embodies
femininity in an exceptional, even ideal way.
 Body Parts
In each of the poem’s four stanzas, the speaker draws
attention to different parts of her body as she explains
the source of her feminine allure. Significantly, the
speaker doesn’t emphasize what each of these body
parts looks like. Instead of focusing on the appearance
of her physical form, she highlights the way she carries
herself. In the second stanza, for instance, she locates
the source of her mystique in the following way:
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
Each of these lines (lines 21–25) highlights a particular
feature of the speaker’s body. In every case, however,
the speaker emphasizes not the body part itself, but a
certain quality that animates it. Her eyes burn with a
passionate fire, and a wry grin reveals the glinting of her
teeth. Meanwhile, her hips sway in a prideful stride, and
her feet step confidently in an exuberant dance. The

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speaker opens the poem by implying that her physical
appearance doesn’t fit the typical profile society expects
for a “pretty” woman. Even so, she has learned to
embody her femininity in a deeply alluring way.
Symbols, Allegory and Motifs
♣ Honey bees (symbol)
The honey bees referenced in stanza two represent the
men who are drawn to the speaker. Her sweetness and
allure are like honey. However, the honey bees may also
symbolize worker bees that are subservient to a queen
bee. The men are at the mercy of the speaker—a queen
bee who dictates their behavior and commands them to
follow her lead.
♣ Female body (symbol)
The female body, as depicted throughout the poem,
symbolizes the strength and beauty of a woman. The
speaker does not merely describe her features—she
specifically points out attributes and gestures that may
possess a double meaning. For example, the reach of her
arms may represent a woman reaching her goals. The
curl of her lips represents every emotion she expresses,
from a smile to a frown. The stride of her step represents
the confidence she feels as a strong woman.

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(18) Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman: An
Anthem for Modern-Day Feminism
While Maya Angelou wrote her classic poem in 1978,

the poem’s message continues to speak to readers today.
Since its publication, it has been featured in various
forms of media and recited by many famous figures—
including Angelou herself. The poet considered this
poem her personal story and was known to recite it often
in public. Oprah Winfrey considers Angelou her mentor
and paid homage to her by reciting the poem for her
inspirational Super Soul Sunday program in 2018.
“Phenomenal Woman” was also featured in the 1993
movie, Poetic Justice. In the movie, the title character—
an African-American poet played by Janet Jackson—
recites the verse among many other Angelou poems.
Angelou in fact wrote all of the poems featured in the
film, and she even played a small role. Her words
express the passion and self-discovery of the film’s
titular character.
Perhaps the most prominent use of the poem was in a
2017 ad campaign by the British women’s
empowerment organization, This Girl Can. In the
advertisement, various women of all different walks of
life are shown participating in different sports while
Angelou recites the poem in voiceover. As the
organization celebrates the power of women and

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encourages them to be their best, the poem is a fitting
choice for conveying such a message.
As modern-day feminists continue to fight for women’s
rights and living their best lives just as Angelou did
during her lifetime, “Phenomenal Woman” serves as an
anthem for female empowerment and a reminder that
women are amazing and capable of achieving anything
they want.
♣ 5. Maya Angelou’s Poem “Woman Work”

(1) Text of Angelou’s Poem “Woman Work”
I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.
Shine on me, sunshine

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Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.
Storm, blow me from here

With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.
Fall gently, snowflakes

Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.
Sun, rain, curving sky

Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own.
(2) Angelou’s “Woman Work”: Introduction
In her poem 'Woman Work' (1978), Maya Angelou
(1928‐2014) writes from the perspective of a black
woman in America, who must balance her roles between
being a mother, a housekeeper, and a slave sent to work
out in the plantations. Her work is never done, but she
keeps on moving and the only solace she seeks is that of
the peace of the nature that surrounds her. Through this
short, lyric poem, Maya Angelou is able to explore
expansive themes and ideas regarding slavery,
━ 191 ━
ownership, nature, work, rest, and the expectations and
strength of women
Angelou describes the poem 'Woman Work' as
presenting the endless work of a woman. 2 While the
hard work of men in the fields typically lasts from
sunrise to sunset, the work of a woman is never-ending.
However, Maya Angelou presents a woman's strength
through her ability to manage so many responsibilities.
(3) Maya Angelou’s “Woman Work”: Summary
Woman Work Analysis: “Woman Work” is a very
domestic poem that depicts the typical routine life of a
woman performing her daily chores effectively and then
yearns for a fantastic break amidst the different
elements of nature that tend to give her strength and
comfort.
As a housewife, she has to perform all the household
chores and attend to her children, mend their clothes,
mop the floor and shop for their meals. She also has to
weed off her garden, press shirts, cut canes and clean up
her whole house to make it beautiful and appealing.
The poem opens with a long list of things that the
speaker says she needs to do, including caring for the
children, cleaning, gardening, tending to company and
to the sick, and picking cotton. Maya Angelou focuses
on domestic tasks which are relevant to the majority of

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wives and mothers, but also includes details specifying
that this woman is a black slave.
The list of things that the woman in the poem has to do
begins with things that she has understandable
responsibility for, such as taking care of her children.
However, her duties gradually expand to include
broader, increasing obligations. The woman’s
responsibilities questionably stretch into caring for the
home, the garden, the visitors, the sick, and then
ultimately, the plantation, which she has absolutely no
ownership over. The woman turns to nature for solace
and peace from all of her work.
This is the struggle of her routine, which makes her life
very monotonous and prosaic. The woman referred to
in the poem is an idealist, and she eagerly wants to go
into the lap of nature and get the comfort and relief that
she was craving.
She calls forth the sun, the moon, the sky, the cold
mountains to take her away from the cacophony and
into space so that she can fly without having to think
about her neck-breaking routine. She wants to feel the
freshness of nature and the natural elements that can
stimulate her body and soul, giving her the energy to
perform the next day’s household chores.

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(4) Maya Angelou’s “Woman Work”: Analysis
'Woman Work' is written from the first‐person
perspective, which lends a personal voice to the
collective voice of women who undertake seemingly
endless work and responsibilities. The speaker
mentions that there is "cane to be cut," she must "clean
up this hut," 1 and there is "cotton to pick," indicating
that she is a slave (Lines 11, 12, and 14). Many black
slaves in America lived in log huts and worked long
hours on sugar and cotton plantations.
The context of this female worker being a slave lends an
additional perspective to the idea of her labor, as she is
not simply working for herself and to support her own
family. Rather, her life and labor are owned by another
person—the slave owner or plantation owner. This idea
of ownership is significant and is revisited at the end of
the poem. The plantation is a symbol of slavery, which
strips her of her freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless,
the woman is not complaining, but builds urgency in her
business and scattered, unending obligations.
After the list of things the woman has to do comes four
stanzas that resemble the verses of a song, describing
how the woman turns to nature for relief from her
unending work. While the list of things to do creates a
stressful atmosphere and intense tone, the rest of the
poem has a calm tone and relaxed atmosphere due to
the introduction of the imagery of nature.
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First, the speaker asks the sun to shine upon her and the
rain to cool her. Second, she asks the wind to blow her
so that she can rest and "float across the sky" (Line 21).
Third, she asks snowflakes to cover her, kiss her, and let
her rest. Lastly, she says to the nature that surrounds
her, "You're all that I can call my own" (Line 30).
Nature is the only thing that is there for the speaker
when she needs comfort and relief. Nature symbolizes
something that is free; it can not be truly owned or kept
by anyone, in contrast to the woman who is a slave.
Throughout the poem, the woman never complains
about her obligations. She states them matter of factly
and turns to nature for solace without letting her
burdens manifest in anger or desperation. This points to
both the inner and outer strength of a woman. In the
poem, 'Woman Work,' Maya Angelou points to both the
strength and resilience of women, as well as the endless
demands and expectations of society that leave women
in search of rest and relief.
(5) Maya Angelou’s “Woman Work”: Themes
Although the poem 'Woman Work' is quite short and
uses simple, everyday language, Maya Angelou explores
complex themes of slavery, ownership, work, rest,
female expectations and strength, and nature through
it. These themes reflect the complexities of life, which
the speaker hopes to remedy with the simple comforts
of nature.
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 Black Women’s Labor and Freedom
“Woman Work” describes the pressure that women,
and Black women in particular, face to work and care
for other people. The speaker must cook, clean, pick
cotton, cut sugar cane, and take care of everyone around
her, finding brief respite only in the freedom offered by
the natural world. Through the speaker's experiences,
the poem illustrates the way that society's relentless
demands on Black women's time and energy can leave
them with little, if anything, to call their own.
The speaker begins by listing out a series of domestic
chores that have traditionally fall to women—like
caring for children, cooking, and cleaning—before
transitioning to details that specifically evoke slavery.
As the speaker describes how she must “pick cotton”
and “cut” sugar “cane,” the poem places modern Black
women’s unpaid, often thankless labor within a vital
historical context. By referencing both enslavement and
traditional housework, the poem implies that society has
long claimed Black women’s work, their bodies, and
their very lives.
Indeed, the speaker seems to sacrifice her own needs
and desires even as she must always “see about the
sick,” cook for “company,” and “tend” children. All of
her time is filled with other people’s demands, and the
poem further suggests that this labor is never-ending:

━ 196 ━
the speaker’s life is a constant series of things she’s
“got” to do.
In the end, all that she can “call [her] own” is the fleeting
beauty of nature: the rain, sun, snow, and dew, none of
which expect anything from her. In the end, the poem
paints a picture of the endless, grueling labor that Black
women have done and continue to do for others, and
which is all too often ignored or minimized by the rest
of society.
 Slavery and Ownership
The speaker in the poem is a black female slave who is
constantly working for others and faces the dilemma of
having nothing in her life to call her own. Angelou
eloquently hints at this overarching hardship of slavery
without getting into the nitty-gritty elements of it. Slaves
were not able to claim themselves or their children as
their own, as their lives were in the hands of another and
trapped in a system bigger than themselves. The
speaker does not say "my children" or "my baby," but
"the children" and "the baby" (Lines 1 and 6). This
indicates both the woman's lack of ownership over her
own children, and also the likelihood that she had to
care for her slave owner's children as her own. At the
end of the poem, the speaker calls out to nature saying
"You're all that I can call my own" 1 (Line 10). This
suggests that everything else the woman works for in the
poem, she feels she has no autonomy or ownership over.
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 The Comfort of Nature
Nature is personified in the poem. It is the only one who
listens to the speaker, cares for her, and gives her rest
and relief. While the rest of the world only asks and
makes demands of the woman, the woman is able to
make demands of nature, and it helps to calm her.
Nature is presented in the poem as something both
powerful and gentle. It is something bigger and greater
than the struggles of the human person, and
simultaneously belongs to no one and everyone; it is vast
and mysterious but resonates and can bring solace to
every human heart.
In a world that claims to own Black women and their
work, all the speaker of the poem can “call [her] own”
is the beauty of the natural world. The poem implies
that nature can offer a sense of relief, peace, and
belonging for the speaker and for other women who
have been forced into backbreaking and unjust labor
over the centuries.
While unfair and incessant demands rob the speaker of
her time and independence, she can still find consolation
in things like the warm sunshine and the refreshing
rain. The speaker says that “all that [she] can call [her]
own” is nature, which exists outside of the "hut" in
which she cooks, cleans, and cares for children.

━ 198 ━
Nature is one thing that lays no claim to the speaker's
energy or time. In fact, nature seems to work for the
speaker, who calls on it to "cool [her] brow" and grant
her "rest." Nature thus represents freedom for the
speaker, who imagines herself essentially dissolving into
its beauty. She wants to“float across the sky,” for
example, and envisions herself covered with snow.
While these images bring a sense of relief and peace,
they also might make readers think of death—of the
speaker's body buried under the ground and her soul in
heaven. In this reading, the poem implies that only in
death—and, through death, becoming one with
nature—can the speaker truly escape from the endless
toil of her earthly work.
The poem's vision of nature is thus both consoling and
bleak: on the one hand, the speaker finds relief and
comfort in nature's refreshing beauty. On the other, it's
possible that she feels as if she'll never truly be free until
she's returned to nature in death.
 Work and Rest
A woman's work is presented in the poem as a list of
never-ending tasks of caring for everyone and
everything besides oneself. The woman in the poem
never complains, but it is evident that she greatly desires
comfort, affection, and rest. Rest is explored through
the imagery of nature, which provides a respite from the

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stresses of work. However, the language of the poem
also indicates that the woman seeks eternal rest in the
form of death. Angelou brings in the idea of death to
suggest that humans are meant to work on Earth, and
full peace only comes after death.
 Expectations of women and the strength of
women
Maya Angelou points to the large demands put on a
woman who is to fulfill the role of mother, maid,
caretaker, and slave. Angelou suggests that domestic
roles that women often undertake are increasingly
demanding and often unrealistic. Women are made to
care for everyone and everything, and Angelou calls
into question where a woman gets the strength to do so.
Maya Angelou suggests the hardship of all the demands
made on a woman, but also how balancing all these
responsibilities reveals her inner strength. It is not a
superficial shiny and glorious strength that a woman
contains, but a quiet, enduring strength that endows her
with a unique capacity to care.
(6) Maya Angelou’s “Woman Work”: Form and
Rhyme Scheme
'Woman Work' is a lyric poem, or a short poem that has
high musical quality and often conveys strong emotions.
The poem's first stanza is fast-paced and highly
rhythmic, and the rest of the stanzas are four lines and
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have the flow of verses of a song. Angelou actually sings
them when reciting the poem.
The poem 'Woman Work' comprises five stanzas. The
first stanza is a long, 14‐line stanza that lists all the
things that the speaker is expected to do as a woman
slave. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth stanzas are each
four lines long, and are characterized by the imagery
and personification of nature, which the speaker turns
to for relief.
Angelou’s use of rhyme in the first 14 lines of ‘‘Woman
Work,’’ however, is appropriate and underscores the
meaning behind the stanza. By developing the stanza
using rhyming couplets (every pair of lines rhymes), the
poem shows that the work is mundane. That rhyming
quality makes the stanza seem more like a list whose
items must be checked off every day. The woman’s
frustration can be felt as she reels off the list of activities
she must complete.
Rhyme is used but more loosely in the four shorter
stanzas and not to the same effect. Instead, the end
rhyme is a means of pulling together each stanza to
present a complete image in the reader’s mind.
Though there is no consistent meter throughout the
poem, Maya Angelou's words are tied together with
rhymes and short lines. The first stanza follows a
consistent AABB rhyme scheme, which establishes

━ 201 ━
stresses on the end words of each line and helps create a
fast-paced, rap-like rhythm. The fast rhythm
established by the AABB rhyme scheme and short lines
reflects the busy nature of a woman's life and
responsibilities.
"I've got the children to tend —A
The clothes to mend —A
The floor to mop —B
The food to shop" 1 —B
(Lines 1‐4)
This rhyme scheme is disrupted in the verse stanzas,
slowing down the reading of the poem to help create a
more relaxed atmosphere, which mimics the imagery of
nature. While the second and third stanzas do not have
very clear rhymes, the fourth and fifth stanzas follow an
ABCB rhyme scheme that lends to the poem feeling of
closure.
"Sun, rain, curving sky —A
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone —B
Star shine, moon glow —C
You're all that I can call my own." 1 —B
(Lines 27‐30)
The rhyme between "stone" and "own" emphasizes the
idea of ownership that was initially presented by the
context of slavery. The woman feels that all this work

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she is doing belongs to others, but that nature is
something that comes to her aid and thus, she can truly
call it her own.
(7) Maya Angelou’s “Woman Work”: Symbols
Water Symbolism
Partway through the poem, the speaker asks the rain to
fall on her and the drops of dew to “cool [her] brow”
(implying that the speaker’s forehead is sweaty and hot
from all of her work). This water symbolizes the
cleansing and renewing power of the natural world.
The rain and dew literally offer the speaker respite and
relief, washing away the sweat and dirt from her body.
At the same time, they also evoke the way that nature
offers the speaker a kind of spiritual renewal,
momentarily washing away the deeper burdens of her
work.
Dew in particular suggests rebirth and new beginnings,
given that it appears on plants early in the morning. Its
mention here evokes the way that nature helps the
speaker find renewed strength in nature.
 Line 16: “Rain on me, rain”
 Line 17: “Fall softly, dewdrops”

━ 203 ━
The Wind and Sky Symbolism
The wind and sky in the poem represent the sense of
freedom and escape that the speaker finds in nature.
When the speaker calls on the "Storm" to "blow" her
away with its "fiercest wind," this speaks to her desire
escape to somewhere far away from the world that
places all of these demands on her time and body. Her
desire to "float across the sky" similarly represents her
desire to be free of the endless work she is expected to
do on the ground.
At the same time, these symbolic associations might
suggest that the speaker feels she can only truly find
freedom in death. The sky often represents the afterlife
in literature (given its association with heaven). That the
speaker envisions herself floating in the sky, then, might
imply that in such oppressive circumstances, the
speaker can only find true relief in death.
 Lines 19-21: “Storm, blow me from here / With your
fiercest wind / Let me float across the sky”
 Line 27: “curving sky”
The Snow Symbolism
Snow and cold are linked with winter, a season that
generally symbolizes death. When the speaker calls on
the "snowflakes" to "[c]over" her, then, this might
subtly represent her belief that she can only escape her
━ 204 ━
endless work by dying (and, in turn, being buried in the
earth and becoming one with the natural world that
provides her with "rest").
 Lines 23-26: “Fall gently, snowflakes / Cover me with
white / Cold icy kisses and / Let me rest tonight.”
(8) Maya Angelou’s “Woman Work”: Message
Black Women’s Labor and Freedom
“Woman Work” describes the pressure that women,
and Black women in particular, face to work and care
for other people. The speaker must cook, clean, pick
cotton, cut sugar cane, and take care of everyone around
her, finding brief respite only in the freedom offered by
the natural world.
(9) What kind of Maya Angelou’s “Woman
Work”?
“Woman Work” is a very domestic poem depicting the
typical routine life of a woman who performs her daily
chores effectively and then yearns for a fantastic break
amidst the elements of nature to give her strength and
comfort.
(10) Maya Angelou’s “Woman Work”: Literary
Devices
Maya Angelou uses many literary devices and poetic
techniques in the poem 'Woman Work,' including
━ 205 ━
anaphora, syntax, alliteration, contrast, personification,
and assonance.
Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of consonants, and Angelou
employs alliteration all the way through the first stanza,
or 14 lines. She uses hard consonant sounds, primarily
‘‘c’’ and ‘‘t.’’ These give a harsh, angry tone to the
words of the stanza. This harshness is emphasized by
the short length of the words: tots, cane, cut, hut, sick,
pick, mop, shop.
Personification
Objects are personified when they are given human
characteristics. Although Angelou does not use
personification very much, she does use it when talking
about the woman’s interactions with nature.
In lines 17 and 18, the dewdrops cool her brow. Usually,
the idea of cooling one’s brow involves one person
comforting another. In lines 23–25, the snowflakes cover
the woman with kisses. Again, this is an act of comfort,
one usually involving humans.
This use of personification emphasizes the important
role nature plays in the speaker’s life. Nature relieves
and comforts, restores and provides. It acts as a sort of
soul mate in the life of a woman who has spoken not one
word of having a partner or husband or even friend.
━ 206 ━
━ 207 ━
Don DeLillo
And
In Don DeLillo's
‫التكنولوجيا النووية ورسائل الموت فى رواية الضوضاء البيضاء للكاتب‬

‫األمريكى دون ديليلو‬
Compiled & Edited
By
Dr. Radwan El-Sobky
2023

━ 208 ━
Chapter Four
White Noise (1985)
American Novel by Don DeLillo
1- Don DeLillo (1936- )

Don DeLillo is a contemporary American writer
who has written numerous novels. Most of his novels
deal with contemporary American popular culture; at
times they appear to critique contemporary culture
while at others they seem to reveal in the kitsch.
Don DeLillo was born on Nov. 20, 1936, in New
York City's borough of the Bronx, to Italian
immigrants. DeLillo had little contact with literature
until he was 18, when he describes being carried away
by the power and beauty of language. He attended
Fordham University in New York, but found the city a
far more exciting playground, citing its access to
experimental art, jazz, and movies (he describes French
filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard as the primary influence
over his early work). He had a brief stint in the
advertising world, and though he claims it was an
uninteresting time of his life, his obsession with media
and American culture may find its roots there, as well
as in his immigrant background.
DeLillo’s first novel, Americana (1971), traces
these issues of media and culture through the travels of
━ 209 ━
a television executive who tries to rediscover America
through a film project. DeLillo delved into deeper
questions of death, celebrity, cults, and consumerism in
End Zone (1972), about a football player, and Great
Jones Street (1973), about a reclusive rock star. His next
series of books -- Ratner's Star (1976), Players (1977),
Running Dog (1978), and Amazons (1980, written under
the pen name Cleo Birdwell) -- all deal with highly
specific fictional worlds. Ratner's Star, for instance, is
about astronomy, and Amazons tells a woman's "true"
memoirs of playing in the National Hockey League.
DeLillo moved to Greece for several years and
wrote The Names (1982), largely set in Greece. When he
returned to the U.S. and wrote White Noise in 1985, his
work broke through to the mainstream, winning the
National Book Award. Thereafter, DeLillo focused
more intently on conspiracy and cults in Libra (1988)
and Mao II (1991). His magnum opus, Underworld
(1998), spans the latter half of the 20th-century and
explores celebrity, consumerism, and waste. While
many reviewers praised it, most readers could not finish
the 827-page tome. DeLillo has also written two plays --
The Day Room (1986) and Valparaiso (1999), and he
recently published the novellas The Body Artist (2001)
and Pafko at the Wall (2001), released on the 50th-
anniversary of New York Giant baseball player Bobby
Thomson's pennant-winning home run against the
Dodgers. The novella is an adaptation of the opening
━ 210 ━
pages of Underworld, which tracks several people,
famous and not, on that historic day.
DeLillo shows no signs of slowing in production or
award-collecting, nor does his preference to remain
reclusive seem to be as overpowering as it is for his
major postmodern literary counterpart, Thomas
Pynchon. Though some readers find his writing cold
and abstract, DeLillo blends intellectualism with human
characters and a dark sense of humor in ways few
writers can, living or dead.
Don DeLillo has published fifteen novels under his
own name since 1971, and here they are:
1971 - Americana 1988 - Libra
1972 - End Zone 1991 - Mao II
1973 - Great Jones Street 1997 - Underworld
1976 - Ratner's Star 2001 - The Body Artist
1977 - Players 2003 - Cosmopolis
1978 - Running Dog 2007 - Falling Man
1982 - The Names 2010 - Point Omega
1985 - White Noise
2. White Noise Introduction

White Noise was published in 1985 to great
critical acclaim; it won the National Book Award and,
more importantly, opened up DeLillo's oeuvre to new
readers. More than anything, it established DeLillo
alongside Thomas Pynchon as one of the most
━ 211 ━
important contemporary writers and a must-have on
collegiate syllabi.
White Noise is about two people, Jack Gladney
and his wife Babette, who are too worried about dying
to live well. But living well is not an option in DeLillo’s
late 20th century: existence is mediated through
cultural transitory things: pharmaceuticals,
corporations, the media. (“I want to welcome you all on
behalf of Advanced Disaster Management, a private
consulting firm that conceives and operates simulated
evacuations.”) Gladney is a professor in Hitler studies
at college; Babette is addicted to a mysterious
prescription drug named Dylar. Between them they
have children from previous marriages called things
like Heinrich and Wilder. They are satirically modern.
White Noise is the story of Jack and Babette and
their children from several previous marriages. They
live in a college town where Jack is a Professor of Hitler
Studies, Babette teaches posture and reads tabloids to
elderly people. Except for the possibility of some drug
that Babette seems to be hiding, everything is normal
chaos in their lives. And then a deadly toxic accident
causes them to seek shelter, bringing to surface this
nagging fear of death.
White Noise is about fear, death, and technology.
Don DeLillo says about the novel:

━ 212 ━
In White Noise in particular, I tried to find a kind of
radiance in dailiness. Sometimes this radiance can
be almost frightening. Other times it can be almost
holy or sacred.... Our sense of fear--we avoid it
because we feel it so deeply, so there is an intense
conflict at work.... I think it is something we all feel,
something we almost never talk about, something
that is almost there. I tried to relate it in White Noise
to this other sense of transcendence that lies just
beyond our touch. This extraordinary wonder of
things is somehow related to the extraordinary dread,
to the death fear we try to keep beneath the surface
of our perceptions (From the DeCurtis interview)
3. The Story of the Title

Before publishing White Noise Don DeLillo selected a
different title: "Panasonic." In a letter to him editor,
Elisabeth Sifton, on June 13, 1984, DeLillo explained the
importance of this:
Panasonic as a title is crucial for a number of
reasons. … The word ‘Panasonic’, split into its
component parts – ‘pan,’' from the Greek,
meaning ‘all,’ and 'sonic,' from the Latin sonus,
meaning ‘sound’ -- strikes me as the one title
that suggests the sound-saturation that is so
vital to the book. … (DeLillo's Letters).

━ 213 ━
Unfortunately, the Matsushita corporation felt
otherwise and denied Viking permission to use the
brand name. Included in the Ransom Center archives is
a list DeLillo made of 39 possible other titles, among
them "White Noise," and "Psychic Data" Today,
DeLillo acknowledges that "White Noise" turned out to
be a fine choice, after all. "Once a title is affixed to a
book, it becomes as indelible as a sentence or a
paragraph."
White Noise, in keeping with its title, consists of a
chorus of background sounds that hum throughout the
narrative. The traffic hums, Babette hums, the
supermarket is filled with endless sounds, and
commercials and fragments of television shows
continually interrupt the narrative. Jack perceives the
world as essentially constituted by this cacophony, as a
stream of sounds, some human, some artificial. Jack and
Babette speculate that perhaps death is nothing but an
awful, endless stream of white noise, and so white noise
filters into the narrative and becomes part of it, just as
death becomes part of nearly every conversation had by
the characters. These noises are not simply the
background sounds of life—they are part of life, the
very substance of which our days are made.
With its title alone, White Noise implies a world
dominated by digital technology pervaded by static,
irritating background noise. The title is summed up
perfectly as: “
━ 214 ━
The very notion of ‘white noise’ that is so central to
the novel implies a neutral and reified media speech,
but also a surplus of data and an entropic blanket of
information glut which flows from a media-saturated
society.”
White noise is used in the novel as a metaphor for
death. Not by the narrator, but by the characters
themselves. There is a paragraph, ‘uniform, white
sound’ is used in such a way. The actual term ‘white
noise’ is avoided though, but the metaphor – the novel’s
title therefore as well – is quite obvious.
“What if death is nothing but sound?”
Electrical noise.”
“You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful.”
“Uniform, white.”
“Sometimes it sweeps over me [...] Sometimes it
insinuates itself into my mind, little by little. I try to talk
to it. ‘Not now, Death’.” (White Noise 198)
Remarkable about this part is that it is not ‘death’,
but ‘Death’, capitalized, personalized Death.
White noise is also used to tape voices of ghosts:
mostly the ghosts of deceased people. It is called
Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). When you tape
the static of a radio sound patterns develop on the tape
which can be interpreted as voices. The interpretation

━ 215 ━
of this is of course controversial. But the link between
white noise, ghosts, death and White Noise is evident.
4. The Scientific Meaning of White Noise

and Black Noise
4.1. What is noise?
Noise is one of the fundamental elements of
science—so important that some believe that we could
not exist without it. The study of thermodynamics, as
based on the measurements of chemistry and physics,
has been a fruitful field, leading to certain perceptions
about the nature of atoms and their random energy
fluctuations. These random movements and associated
energies are directly related to the phenomenon we call
noise. The accuracy of signal measurements is limited
by noise; and the measurement of energy distributions
has provided the data for the characterization of noises
of various types, including audible, electrical,
mechanical, and optical.
4.2. What are the Colors of Noise?

The most common noise is white noise, which is a
function of temperature and the random movement of
electrons in a conductor. Because sound waves do not
produce color, it seems odd at first to characterize noise
by color type. However, the characterizations do make
sense. Sound colors are based on the way the frequency
━ 216 ━
of a particular sound corresponds to the light wave
frequencies of a particular color. The colors of noise are:
white, pink, brown (red), blue (azure), purple (violet),
and gray. White noise has a flat frequency in linear
space; the corresponding light waves do not produce
color. In addition, white noise is the only one that works
in linear space. White noise is often referred to, in
common use, as a pleasant background sound, such as
waves crashing on a beach. However, not all sounds
described as white noise actually produce a flat
frequency.
1) Pink Noise: Unlike white noise, which works in
linear space, pink noise works in logarithmic space.
Like white noise, though, it has a flat frequency. But
because pink noise works in a different type of space,
it produces a different sound. In addition, due to it
being a logarithmic sound, it has a proportionate
bandwidth throughout each wave.
2) Blue Noise: While blue (azure) noise, like the other
noise colors, describes a specific frequency of sound,
it has looser applications, similar to the way white
noise does. When working with computer graphics,
blue noise has come to mean any sort of low-
frequency noise without any major spikes of energy.
3) Purple Noise: Purple noise is much denser and
more powerful than any of the other noises described

━ 217 ━
so far, although it does not have any common usage
the way blue and white noises do.
4) Gray Noise: Gray noise works over a range of
frequencies. It is also subjected to a psychoacoustic
equal loudness curve. Both of these characteristics
mean that gray noise sounds equally loud at all
frequencies.
5) Brown Noise: Like most of the other noises, brown
(red) noise is logarithmic. However, brown (red)
noise is a bit different in that it is not named for a
particular color spectrum, but instead for a specific
type of motion. Specifically, the name was adopted
from Brownian motion, because brown noise is
generated by the algorithm that produces Brownian
motion. This is why brown noise can also be referred
to as red noise. While it is named for Brownian
motion, the waves correspond with red light waves.
6) Green Noise: Green noise also fits several
descriptions. It is often described as a long-term
power spectrum averaged over several sites, and is
considered the background noise of the world. When
applied to this definition, green noise highly
resembles pink noise. Green noise is also considered
the mid-range frequency of white noise, or is thought
of as bounded brown noise.

━ 218 ━
7) Orange Noise: Orange noise, on the other hand, has
only one description. It is a low-energy, finite, quasi-
stationary sound. The frequencies orange noise
produces are centered on the frequencies of musical
notes in a scale. The sound generated by an out-of-
tune ensemble is orange noise.
8) Red Noise: While red noise is typically synonymous
with brown noise, it can also be a synonym for pink
noise, as pink and red light wave have similar
frequencies. This explains many of the similarities
between pink and brown noise. Red noise works as
another descriptor: it is used to characterize noise
from different sources, termed oceanic ambient noise.
The color red is applied to oceanic ambient noise
because of the way the ocean absorbs high sound
frequencies.
4.3. What is White Noise?

White noise is the noise created when all audible
frequencies of sound are combined at the same time and
the same density. In other words, white noise is
produced by combining sounds of all different
frequencies together. If you took all of the imaginable
tones that a human can hear and combined them
together, you would have white noise. It is similar in
nature to white light, which occurs when all the colors
of the spectrum are brought together. Also called white

━ 219 ━
sound, white noise is used primarily as a sleep or
relaxation aid.
White noise is also called white sound. a steady,
unvarying, unobtrusive sound, as an electronically
produced drone or the sound of rain, used to mask or
obliterate unwanted sounds. In Physics white noise is
a random noise with a uniform frequency spectrum
over a wide range of frequencies. It is a heterogeneous
mixture of sound waves extending over a wide
frequency range that has been used to mask out
unwanted noise interfering with sleep called also white
sound
The actual sound produced by white noise is
comparable to rainfall or ocean waves. It is a gentle tone
that can be found in nature. Because white noise
combines all frequencies of sound ranging from very
low tones to high pitches, it is very useful in masking
other noises and sounds.
Fans and radio stations with no broadcast are often
used as white noise simulators, providing a soothing
sound that blocks out other background noises. While
these methods do not produce true white noise, their
effects are a good example of practical uses for white
sound. The main drawback to using this variety of white
noise, however, is that the user has no control over the
volume or frequencies produced in this manner.

━ 220 ━
The adjective "white" is used to describe this type
of noise because of the way white light works. White
light is light that is made up of all of the different colors
(frequencies) of light combined together (a prism or a
rainbow separates white light back into its component
colors). In the same way, white noise is a combination of
all of the different frequencies of sound. You can think
of white noise as 20,000 tones all playing at the same
time.
Because white noise contains all frequencies, it is

frequently used to mask other sounds. If you are in a
hotel and voices from the room next-door are leaking
into your room, you might turn on a fan to drown out
the voices. The fan produces a good approximation of
white noise.
White noise is a sound that contains every
frequency within the range of human hearing (generally
from 20 hertz to 20 kHz) in equal amounts. (Hertz is a
unit of frequency (of change in state or cycle in a sound
wave, alternating current, or other cyclical waveform)
of one cycle per second.) Most people perceive this
sound as having more high-frequency content than low,
but this is not the case. This perception occurs because
each successive octave has twice as many frequencies as
the one preceding it. (Octave is the interval of eight
diatonic degrees between two tones of the same name,

━ 221 ━
the higher of which has twice as many vibrations per
second as the lower.)
White noise is generated for a variety of
purposes, including masking sounds in a room, testing
loudspeakers for distortion and coloration and to
provide input to a synthesizer, which uses filters to
derive all of its sounds.
4.4. What is Black Noise?

Black Noise may mean silence. Silence is the
relative or total lack of audible sound. By analogy, the
word silence may also refer to any absence of
communication, even in media other than speech.
Silence is also used as total communication, in reference
to nonverbal communication and spiritual connection.
Silence is also referred to no sounds uttered by anybody
in a room and or area. Silence is a very important factor
in many cultural spectacles, as in rituals.
Thus the most basic definition of Black Noise is to

consider black noise as silence. Similarly, black noise
describes what comes out of an active noise control
system. While it is not silence itself, it cancels out the
other noises in a space, therefore generating silence.
Black noise is also said to describe noises with limited
spectrums. Some researchers suggest that such low-
frequency black noise may accompany natural disasters
such as floods and power outages. So Black Noise is
━ 222 ━
said to be a characteristic of "natural and unnatural
catastrophes like floods, droughts, bear markets, and
various outrageous outages, such as those of electrical
power." Further, "because of their black spectra, such
disasters often come in clusters." (Joseph S. Wisniewski (7
October 1996). "Colors of noise pseudo FAQ, version 1.3)
Black Noise that has a frequency spectrum of

predominately zero power level over all frequencies
except for a few narrow bands or spikes. Note: An
example of black noise in a facsimile transmission
system is the spectrum that might be obtained when
scanning a black area in which there are a few random
white spots. Thus, in the time domain, a few random
pulses occur while scanning.
5- The Plot of White Noise

White Noise describes an academic year in
the life of its narrator, Jack Gladney, a college
professor in a small American town. The novel itself can
be hard to follow, since Jack spends much of his time
detailing seemingly inconsequential conversations, and
several events in the novel have no direct impact on the
action of the story. Despite these tangents, a general
plotline emerges from the narrative.
Jack Gladney teaches at a school called the
College-on-the-Hill, where he serves as the department
chair of Hitler studies. He lives in Blacksmith, a quiet

━ 223 ━
college town, with his wife, Babette, and four of their
children from earlier marriages: Heinrich, Steffie,
Denise, and Wilder. Throughout the novel, various half-
siblings and ex-spouses drift in and out of the family’s
home. Jack loves Babette very much, taking great
comfort in her honesty and openness and what he sees
as her reassuring solidness and domesticity.
Jack Gladney invented the discipline of Hitler
studies in 1968, and he acknowledges that he
capitalizes on Hitler’s importance as a historical figure,
which lends Jack an air of dignity and significance by
association. Over the course of his career, Jack has
consciously made many decisions in order to strengthen
his own reputation and add a certain heft to his personal
identity: when he began the department, for example,
he added an initial to his name to make it sound more
prestigious. Yet he is continually aware of the fact that
his aura and persona were deliberately crafted, and he
worries about being exposed as a fraud. To his great
shame, Jack can’t speak German, so when a Hitler
conference gets scheduled at the College-on-the-Hill,
Jack secretly begins taking German lessons.
Department of Hitler Studies shares a building
with the American environments department, which is
mainly staffed by what Jack refers to as the “New York
émigrés,” a tough, sarcastic group of men obsessed with
American popular culture. Jack befriends one of these
professors, a former sportswriter named Murray Jay
━ 224 ━
Siskind. Murray has come to Blacksmith to immerse
himself in what he calls “American magic and dread.”
Murray finds deep significance in ordinary, everyday
events and locations—particularly the supermarket,
which he claims contains massive amounts of psychic
data.
The majority of the novel is structured around two
major plot points: the airborne toxic event, and Jack’s
discovery of his wife’s participation in an experimental
study of a new psycho-pharmaceutical called Dylar.
One day, Jack finds his son Heinrich on the roof of
the house, watching a billowing cloud of smoke rise into
the sky. Heinrich tells him that a train car has derailed
and caught on fire, releasing a poisonous toxic substance
into the air. The entire town of Blacksmith is ordered to
evacuate to an abandoned Boy Scout camp. While at the
evacuation camp, Jack learns that he’s been exposed to
Nyodene D., a lethal chemical. The technician tells Jack
that the chemical lasts thirty years in the human body
and that in fifteen years they’ll be able to give him a
more definitive answer about his chances for survival.
Perhaps due to the vagueness of this explanation, Jack
becomes preoccupied with the idea that he has now been
marked for death. The townspeople remain evacuated
from their homes for nine more days. After the toxic
cloud disappears, the sunsets in Blacksmith become
shockingly beautiful.

━ 225 ━
Meanwhile, Babette’s daughter Denise discovers a
vial of pills, labeled Dylar, which her mother has been
taking in secret. Babette evades both Denise’s and
Jack’s inquiries, so Jack takes a pill to Winnie Richards,
a scientist at College-on-the-Hill. After analyzing the
pill, Winnie tells Jack that the drug is an incredibly
advanced kind of psycho-pharmaceutical. Jack finally
confronts Babette about the pills. In tears, she tells him
that Dylar is an experimental, unlicensed drug, which
she believes can cure her of her obsessive fear of dying.
In order to get samples of the drug, Babette admits to
having had an affair with the Dylar project manager, a
man she refers to only as Mr. Gray. In return, Jack
confesses to Babette about his fatal Nyodene D.
exposure. His fear of death now greater than ever, Jack
goes in search of Babette’s remaining Dylar pills, only
to find that Denise has thrown them all away.
Jack Gladney begins to have problems sleeping.
He goes in for frequent medical checkups and becomes
preoccupied with clearing all the unused clutter out of
his home. He stays awake late into the night to watch the
children sleep. One evening, Wilder wakes him up, and
Jack finds his father-in-law, Vernon Hickey, asleep in
the backyard. Vernon, a tough, aging handyman, has
come by for a surprise visit. Before he leaves, Vernon
secretly gives Jack a handgun. Shortly afterward, Jack
confides in Murray about his acute death fixation.
Murray proposes the theory that killing someone else

━ 226 ━
can alleviate the fear of death. Jack begins to think of
the gun at odd moments, eventually bringing it to class
with him one afternoon.
On his way home from campus, Jack runs into
Winnie Richards, who tells him that she read an article
on the project manager responsible for Dylar. She tells
Jack the man’s name, Willie Mink, and the approximate
location of the motel he’s now living in. Armed with his
gun, Jack finds Willie Mink, disheveled and half-crazy,
in the same motel room where Mink conducted his
affair with Babette. Jack plans to kill him, and, after a
brief conversation, he pulls out his gun and shoots Mink
twice. In an attempt to make it look like a suicide, Jack
places the gun in Mink’s hand, only to be shot in the
wrist by Mink a moment later. Overcome by a sense of
humanity, Jack drives Mink to the nearest hospital—
which is run by atheist German nuns—and saves his
life.
Jack Gladney returns home and watches the
children sleep. Later that day, Wilder rides his tricycle
across the highway and miraculously survives, an event
that finally allows Jack to let go of his fear of death and
obsession with health and safety hazards. Jack, Babette,
and Wilder take in the spectacular sunsets from the
overpass. Jack closes the novel with a description of the
supermarket, which has rearranged its aisles, throwing
everyone into a state of confusion.

━ 227 ━
6. White Noise: Synopsis and Summary
 Synopsis
White Noise dramatizes a contemporary
American family's attempts to deal with the mundane
conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the
universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility
of happiness in an uncertain world.
Set in 1984, Jack Gladney, is a professor of
"Hitler studies" (a field he founded) at the College-
on-the-Hill. Despite his specialism, he speaks no
German and is secretly taking basic lessons to
prepare for a speech he is due to give at a conference.
Jack is married to Babette, his fourth wife.
Together, they raise a blended family with four
children; Heinrich and Steffie from two of Jack's
previous marriages, Denise from Babette's previous
marriage, and Wilder, a child they conceived
together. Denise spies on Babette, finding her secret
prescription stash of Dylar, a mysterious drug not in
the usual records. Jack experiences a dream of a
mysterious man trying to kill him, alluding to an
earlier conversation with Babette about their fear of
death. Jack’s colleague, Murray Siskind, a professor
of American culture, wishes to develop a similar
niche field, "Elvis studies", and convinces Jack to
help him. Both briefly compete with each other as
competition between their courses arise.
━ 228 ━
Their life is disrupted, however, when a
cataclysmic train accident casts a cloud of chemical
waste over the town. This "Airborne Toxic Event"
forces a massive evacuation, which leads to a major
traffic jam on the highway. Jack drives to a gas
station to refill his car, where he is inadvertently
exposed to the cloud. The family and numerous
others are forced into quarantine at a summer camp.
Murray supplies Jack with a small palm-sized pistol,
to protect himself against the more dangerous
survivalists in the camp. One day, chaos ensues when
families desperately try to escape the camp. The
Gladneys are almost able to make it out, but end up
with their car floating in the river. After nine days,
the family is able to leave the camp. However, since
Jack was briefly exposed to the chemical waste, his
fear of death becomes exacerbated.
Later, everything has returned back to normal
except for Babette, who has become pale and distant
from Jack. Soon afterward, Jack begins having
hallucinations of a mysterious man following him
around. Denise shares her concerns regarding Dylar
and Jack confronts Babette. She admits to having
joined a shadowy clinical trial for a drug to treat
death anxieties, and that she was accepted in
exchange for sex with “Mr. Gray”. Intrigued by the
idea, Jack asks Denise for the Dylar bottle, but she
reveals she threw them away earlier. While digging

━ 229 ━
through the garbage, Jack finds a newspaper ad for
Dylar, prompting him to retrieve his pistol and get
revenge on Mr. Gray. Jack tracks him down at a
motel, where he discovers that Mr. Gray was the man
in his hallucinations. Jack shoots him and puts the
gun in his hand so as to make it look like suicide.
Babette unexpectedly shows up and sees a still-alive
Mr. Gray, who manages to shoot them both. Jack
drives all three to a hospital run by German atheist
nuns, where they heal and reconcile with each other.
The movie ends with the Gladneys shopping at
an A&P supermarket, where the family participates
in a music video-like dance.
Summary
The narrator, Jack Gladney, describes the annual
arrival of station wagons at his college, College-on-the-
Hill. He walks into his quiet town of Blacksmith, where
he lives with his wife, Babette, and their four children
by previous marriages -- infant Wilder, Denise, Steffie,
and Heinrich. He is the chairman and inventor of Hitler
studies at the college.
Department of Hitler studies shares a building with
the popular culture department. Jack is friends with
Murray Jay Siskind, a Jewish visiting lecturer on
"living icons." Murray wants to do with Elvis Presley
what Jack has done with Hitler. Jack accompanies

━ 230 ━
Murray to the country to "the most photographed barn
in America."
Jack Gladney goes to the high school stadium and
watches Babette run up and down the steps. He says the
question of who will die first sometimes arises in their
conversation. The family orders Chinese food that
Friday night and unhappily watches television together,
a family ritual.
Jack Gladney drives Heinrich to school and they
debate the rain; Heinrich informs him that the radio
said it was going to rain tonight, while Jack points out
that it is already raining, and that they don't need to
believe the radio over their own senses. Jack lectures his
class on the mass appeal of fascism. He discusses "plots"
-- political, narrative, etc. -- and says that all plots move
"deathward."
In bed, Jack and Babette discuss what to do
sexually. They finally decide that Babette will read him
erotic literature. Jack says that he and Babette tell each
other everything, except about fear of death. Looking
for pornography, Jack finds old photo albums instead,
and he and Babette pore over them for hours.
Jack Gladney’s numerous attempts to learn
German have failed, but he has begun secret lessons (to
prepare for hosting a major Hitler conference in the

━ 231 ━
spring) with a man named Dunlop who lives in
Murray's boarding house.
Jack Gladney says that the grade school had to be
evacuated and inspected for dangerous materials, as
students were beset by a variety of health problems.
Steffie tells Jack that Denise reads the Physicians' Desk
Reference to find out the side effects of Babette's
medication. Jack asks her what medication this is, and
Steffie tells him to ask Denise.
In the supermarket, Murray tells Babette that the
Tibetans believe in a transitional state between death
and rebirth that recharges the soul, and he thinks the
supermarket does this in American culture. Tibetans
see death as the end of attachments to things, he says,
which is a hard thing for people to do, since they want
to deny death. Murray invites the family to dinner next
weekend.
In the kitchen, Denise refers to Babette’s failing
memory, but quickly drops the discussion. Jack finds
Heinrich strategizing chess moves in his room; he plays
with a convicted murderer by mail. That night, Jack
and Babette have dinner at Murray's. After dinner, the
talk turns to television, and Murray says he's been
taking notes on television for the past few months. He
has concluded that the "waves and radiation" of
television have become a "primal force" in the home.
On the walk home, Jack suggests Babette is taking
━ 232 ━
medication. Babette says is not, or at least she doesn't
remember taking anything.
Jack Gladney describes his awkward German
lessons with Dunlop. Bob Pardee, Denise's father and a
businessman, takes the kids out to dinner, and Jack
drives Babette to Mr. Treadwell, the blind man to
whom she reads tabloids. At his house, Babette says she
can't find him, and the neighbors and police provide no
help, either. The next day, the authorities search the
river for Mr. Treadwell.
Mr. Treadwell and his sister are found in an
abandoned cookie shack in a mall. The previous day, the
police had enlisted the aid of a psychic. Her tips led them
to a gun and a supply of raw drugs. The psychic had
previously led the police to a number of other intriguing
finds, although each time the police had been looking for
something else.
Denise tells Jack she is worried about Babette’s
memory. She knows she's taking medication because
she saw a prescribed bottle of a medicine called "Dylar"
in the trash, but her drug reference book doesn't list
Dylar. Heinrich comes in and tells them there's footage
of a plane crash on TV. That Friday night, the family
attentively watches TV news of natural disasters.
Murray tells Jack he is having problems securing
his Elvis Presley studies, and Jack promises to visit his

━ 233 ━
next lecture to lend him some validity. At lunch, the men
in the popular culture department ask a series of
personal trivia questions related to pop culture.
In Murray’s lecture, he and Jack trade nuanced
observations on Elvis’s and Hitler’s similar
relationships with their mothers. Jack speaks at length
about Hitler’s relationship with crowds, and argues that
crowds are a way to keep out death, and that to break
away from the crowd is to face death alone.
Wilder cries incessantly all day, and nothing they
do makes him stop. When they take him to the doctor,
they receive the same advice Denise gave. Jack drives
Babette to her class at church. As Jack sits with the
wailing Wilder in the car, he gives in to the crying,
letting it "wash over" him. He drives and lets Wilder
steer. On the way home with Babette the crying stops
suddenly.
On the way to the mall, Denise asks Babette what
she knows about Dylar, but Babette manages to change
the conversation, leading to a series of factually
incorrect statements. At the hardware store, Jack runs
into a computer teacher at the college who tells Jack that
he looks "harmless" and "indistinct" without his
collegiate uniform of a dark robe and dark glasses. Jack
goes on a spending spree in the mall. After a while, they
drive home in silence.

━ 234 ━
Jack Gladney drives to the airport outside of Iron
City to pick up his 12-year-old daughter Bee. Instead,
he finds Tweedy Browner, her mother, who says that
Bee is coming in later. Tweedy, frustrated by her
marriage, confesses that she thought Jack would love
her forever. Before Bee’s flight is scheduled to arrive,
other passengers file out. Jack finds out from a
passenger that the plane had lost power, making
everyone believe they were going to crash. Then the
power went back on in the plane. Bee arrives and is
disappointed that they "went through all that for
nothing," as there's no media in Iron City.
Jack Gladney says the sophisticated Bee makes
the family feel self-conscious. Bee discusses her mother's
problems with Malcolm, Tweedy’s own identity
problems, and Babette's virtues. Jack later drives her to
the airport, and on the way back visits a quiet cemetery.
He reads the tombstones. He feels the dead have a
presence.
Jack Gladney relates a series of deaths from the
obituaries, including that of Mr. Treadwell's sister. He
compares his age to the ages of the deceased. Babette
tells Jack that she wants to die first, as she’d be lonely
without him. Jack says the same thing about himself.
Murray visits for his study of children, and he watches
TV and talks with the kids. Jack admits to himself that,
in truth, he would choose loneliness over death. Jack
joins the kids and Murray and sees Babette’s face on the
━ 235 ━
TV. They are all shocked and confused. They soon
realize she is being interviewed about her adult
education class. Wilder touches the screen and later
cries by the TV.
A tank car has had an accident, and there is a heavy
black cloud of smoke above it. Heinrich says the radio
has defined the toxic chemical as Nyodene D. It is soon
called an "airborne toxic event." Air-raid sirens and a
warning to evacuate makes the family follow the herd of
cars out of town. Jack thinks he sees Babette slip
something in her mouth and swallow it. When he
confronts her, she says it's a Life Saver. Heinrich warns
them that they are running out of gas. They see an
abandoned gas station, and Jack jumps out, shielding
his head under his coat, and refills the tank.
They reach an abandoned Boy Scout camp. Inside
the barracks, various rumors and information circulate
in small crowds. Jack reaches one crowd, where he finds
Heinrich lecturing the people on the chemical properties
of Nyodene D. Jack brings up his doubt over Babette’s
"Life Saver," and she insists it was true. A Jehovah's
Witness family comes over and tells Jack of the
apocalypse.
Denise overhears a woman discussing exposure to
toxic agents, and she tells Jack that he was exposed
when he got out of the car to refill the gas. Jack tells
about his exposure and other personal information to a
━ 236 ━
man who wears the word "SIMUVAC" on his jacket.
"SIMUVAC" stands for "simulated evacuation," a new
state program. Even though this is a real evacuation, the
man tells him, they decided to use it as a model for the
simulated evacuations. The man tells him that his
computer has processed Jack's data and has given a
warning. He tells Jack not to worry about it, and to live
his life.
Babette reads tabloids to Treadwell and other
blind people. Jack joins their group. She reads an article
about proof, through hypnosis, of reincarnation. Jack
goes outside, where a few groups of people stand around
fires. He finds Murray talking to a carload of
prostitutes. Jack confides to him about his exposure to
Nyodene D. Murray philosophizes on death. Jack soon
returns to the barracks and sleeps with his family.
Everyone wakes up and leaves when they are told the
cloud is heading in their direction. The family heads to
Iron City, where they end up in an abandoned karate
studio. Nine days later, everyone is allowed to return
home.
Jack Gladney resolves not to tell Babette about
the dangers of his Nyodene D exposure. He increases the
length of his German lessons. Mylex-suited men patrol
the town. Heinrich believes there is still a great quantity
of Nyodene D present in the town, though they are told
there are only trace amounts, but the real issue is the

━ 237 ━
daily low-dosage radiation people encounter -- from
microwaves, power lines, etc.
Jack Gladney discovers Babette’s bottle of Dylar
inside the bathroom radiator and shows it to Denise.
They decide not to say anything to Babette. Denise
informs him that further research has yielded no clues
as to what Dylar is. Heinrich tells Jack that his friend
Mercator is training to break the world endurance
record for sitting in a cage of poisonous snakes.
Jack Gladney takes a tablet of Dylar to a
neurochemist at the college, Winnie Richards. At home,
Jack tells Babette that he found the Dylar, but she
denies knowing what it is. He revisits Winnie, who tells
him that the Dylar is a "drug delivery system"; it
gradually releases medicine to the brain through a small
hole in the tablet. She doesn't know what the chemical
components are or what it does, though.
In bed, Jack Gladney orders Babette to tell him
about Dylar. She tells him that about a year and a half
ago, she developed a mental condition that wouldn't go
away. One day, while reading a tabloid to Treadwell,
she saw an ad asking for volunteers for secret research.
She was selected as one of the people to take the
experimental drug Dylar. The potential side effects are
dangerous, and the firm eventually decided it was too
risky to let anyone try it, but Babette and Mr. Gray --
the fake name she gives the project manager -- made a
━ 238 ━
private arrangement. In return for sex in a motel room
over several months, he would give her the drug.
Babette won't tell Jack more about Mr. Gray.
Babette reveals what Dylar aims to relieve: fear of
death. Jack confesses that he is also obsessed with death,
but he never told her to protect her. Babette says the
Dylar isn't working, however. Jack confides that to her
about his forecasted death from Nyodene D. After
Babette falls asleep, he looks inside the bathroom
radiator: the bottle of Dylar is gone.
Jack Gladney has a medical checkup which
reveals nothing about his impending death. On the way
back to the supermarket, he runs into SIMUVAC-in-
progress -- a simulated evacuation, complete with
emergency vehicles and volunteer victims, one of whom
is Steffie. At home, Heinrich, who is part of the
evacuation, is with Orest Mercator. Jack asks him why
he wants to sit in a cage of poisonous snakes, and they
debate the possibility of death. Jack goes inside and asks
Babette where the Dylar is, and she says she didn't
move them. She also suggests he wants to take them, and
he promises he doesn't. He wants to know who Mr. Gray
is, but she has promised not to reveal his identity to
anyone. Jack tells Denise the Dylar is to improve
Babette's memory. She says he's lying. Jack says he
knows Denise took the tablets from the radiator. She'll
only return it when she finds out what Dylar does. Jack
fantasizes about the effects of Dylar on him.
━ 239 ━
Jack Gladney wakes up Babette in the middle of
the night; he wants to talk to Mr. Gray. She refuses,
since she believes he wants to ingest Dylar and possibly
kill Mr. Gray. He says he wants only to see if he qualifies
for Dylar and that he's over their sexual trysts. She says
she won't allow Jack to make the same mistake with
Dylar she made. Jack talks with Winnie Richards the
next day. Jack tells her what he's learned about Dylar.
She believes we need to fear death, as it gives life a
"'boundary.'" She tells him to forget about Dylar and
to continue with his life. Jack takes Heinrich to watch as
the insane asylum burns down. The acrid smell of
burning artificial substances disperses the crowd. At
night, Jack stays up thinking about Mr. Gray.
Vernon Dickey, Babette’s handyman father,
unexpectedly visits and hangs around for several days.
One night, Jack goes into Denise's room and roots
around for the Dylar bottle. She wakes up and says she
knows what he's looking for; he says he needs the Dylar
to solve a personal problem. He eventually tells her
about the medicinal properties of Dylar. Denise tells him
that she threw out the Dylar a week ago, fearing Babette
would find it. Jack says he's grateful to her. Vernon
brings Jack out to the car and gives him a handgun.
Jack doesn't want it, but Vernon is persistent. The next
day, Vernon leaves, and Babette cries at his departure.
Jack Gladney roots through the garbage but
cannot locate the Dylar. He has another checkup. His
━ 240 ━
doctor tells him his potassium is very high, but won't tell
him what that means and refers him to a medical center
in a nearby town.
Jack Gladney tells Babette that Denise threw out
the pills. Babette says she hopes this is the end of Jack's
fixation on Mr. Gray, as she will never help Jack locate
him. The next day, a simulated evacuation takes place
for noxious odor. Three days later, a real noxious odor
temporarily drifts over the town.
The Hitler conference begins at the college. Jack
takes further medical tests at the place his doctor
recommended. A doctor tells Jack he has traces of
Nyodene D in his bloodstream which can cause death.
The doctor gives Jack a sealed envelope which he should
show to his doctor.
Jack Gladney and Murray discuss death. Murray
says Jack can put his faith in technology to revive his
body, or he can study the afterlife and take solace from
the idea of its existence. Murray says there are two kinds
of people, killers and "diers." Most people are "diers,"
but the killers, by ending someone's life, somehow gain
a "life-credit." He believes plotting is an attempt to
affirm and control life.
Jack Gladney starts bringing his gun to school.
Heinrich tells Jack that no one would let Orest do his
snake test, so he had been forced to go to a hotel room

━ 241 ━
in a nearby town, where the snakes bit him within a few
minutes. Orest has since gone into hiding. Winnie
Richards tells Jack she saw an article about the group
that manufactured Dylar. She relates what Jack mostly
already knows -- that Willie Mink ("Mr. Gray") had a
sexual liaison with a woman in a ski mask at a motel in
return for Dylar. Mink still lives in the motel, in the
Germantown section of Iron City. Jack takes his
neighbors' car -- they keep the key in the ignition in case
of emergency -- and drives to Iron City.
Jack Gladney finds Willie Mink in the motel
room, half-insane. Jack has an elaborate plan which
involves shooting Mink three times. Jack remembers
Babette's warning of the side effects of Dylar -- that one
can confuse language with reality. Jack exploits this and
scares Mink with words. He fires twice and hits Mink's
stomach. He puts the gun in Mink's hand to make it look
like a suicide. Mink shoots and hits Jack's wrist. Jack
feels a sense of compassion for Mink. He drags the
bloody Mink to the car and gives him mouth-to-mouth
respiration, then tells Mink he shot himself.
Jack Gladney drives around for a hospital with
Mink. They arrive at a clinic run by German-speaking
nuns, who tend to Mink. Jack asks one of them what the
Church believes heaven looks like. She tells him the
nuns don't believe in heaven. The world would collapse,
she says, if they didn’t pretend to believe, for the
nonbelievers require believers. Jack finds out Mink
━ 242 ━
won't die. He drives home and leaves the blood-stained
car in the neighbors' driveway.
Wilder rides his tricycle across the busy highway
one day, not paying attention the cars. Jack describes
how he, Babette, and Wilder frequently go to the
overpass to watch the sunset with many other observers.
He says the Mylex-suited men still patrol the area.
Jack's doctor wants to discuss his impending death, but
Jack is avoiding him, and taking no calls. One day,
shoppers find that the supermarket shelves have been
rearranged. Jack says it doesn't matter, as the terminals
have scanners which decode every item. He believes this
"language of waves and radiation" is "how the dead
speak to the living." Waiting on line together, people
have the chance to browse the tabloids, where we can
read about "The cults of the famous and the dead."
7. The Characters of White Noise

 The Depiction of Characters in White Noise:
The characters of White Noise are all rather
superficial and stereotypical. No one extends beyond
his/her role. DeLillo’s characters do not achieve any
kind of conscious enlightenment, but they do tend to
progress slowly. Jack ultimately comes to see that
focusing on death can itself be fatal. Babette moves

━ 243 ━
towards a focus on Wilder. The rest do seem rather
static.
The characters of White Noise provide the
opportunity for DeLillo, like Thomas Pynchon, to create
allusions and references that expand the potential
significance of a character, often to the point of
absurdity. Heinrich, as an allusion to Himmler, the
director of the SS, Hitler’s information gathering police,
seems appropriate for one who always listens to the
radio. But what about Dunlop?; what could DeLillo be
suggesting here? Or Eric Massingale: what does he have
to do with a feminine hygiene product (Thomas
Pynchon has a character named Stanley Koteks in The
Crying of Lot 49). And what about Jack’s wives: two
have sensuous names, "Breedlove" and "Savory," but
what does that mean for the other two, "Tweedy
Browner" and "Dickey" (Babette). Naming is a game
for DeLillo that creates more puzzles. Like with
Pynchon, one cannot make conclusions about names,
merely possible readings of them.
1. Jack Gladney
Jack is the narrator and protagonist of the novel.
He is the inventor and chairman of Hitler studies at
College-on-the-Hill. His obsessive fear of death drives
the novel, and generally influences most of his
reflections on identity, consumerism, science, and more.
His fourth wife is Babette, and they live with their four
━ 244 ━
children (from different marriages) in the town of
Blacksmith.
Jack Gladney is the narrator and principal
character of White Noise. Jack suffers from two linked
fears: the fear of his own death, and the fear that he will
be exposed as an essentially incompetent, insignificant
man. As the chairman of Hitler studies at the College-
on-the-Hill, Jack shrouds himself in the distinguished,
stately trappings of a successful academic. He wears
sweeping, dramatic robes whenever he’s on campus and
refers to himself professionally as J. A. K. Gladney. He
builds his career around Adolf Hitler, capitalizing on
Hitler’s reputation as one of the most prominent figures
of modern history. At the same time, Jack realizes that
his own professional persona is mostly fabricated. When
establishing himself as an academic, he added a false
initial in order to give his name more weight and, in the
process, subtly evoke the initials of John F. Kennedy,
another extremely important historical figure. Jack also
feels like an intellectual fraud, since he has never
mastered even the rudimentary basics of the German
language, despite his field of expertise.
Jack also suffers from an acute fear of dying. His
study of Hitler speaks, in large part, to that fear: Hitler
represents death on a large scale; in the face of the
Holocaust, Jack’s own, individual death seems
insignificant and, therefore, manageable. However, his
fear often threatens to overwhelm him, especially when
━ 245 ━
he becomes exposed to a toxic chemical called Nyodene
D. The technicians inform him that Nyodene D. remains
in the human body for thirty years and that in fifteen
years they will be able to give him more specific figures
about his chances for survival. Even though these
figures are incredibly vague and, given the fact that
Jack is already middle-aged, don’t actually affect his life
expectancy, Jack becomes increasingly controlled by
fear and anxiety.
Although the fear of death seems unwarranted,
Jack’s worries grow in intensity. Jack’s unspoken fears
speak to greater anxieties at play in late twentieth-
century America. An endless stream of white noise, both
technological and human, characterizes Jack’s life. As
he walks through the never-ending currents of data and
chatter, Jack senses something larger, deeper, and more
primal emanating from behind, or possibly within, all
the noise. Often, this unnamed entity fills Jack with
dread, but just as often Jack—like Murray—finds it
wondrous and potentially transcendent. The experience
of reading White Noise, with its constant digressions and
seemingly pointless anecdotes, resembles Jack’s own
experience of modern life, with its pulsating
interconnectedness and stream of stimuli.
2. Babette
Babette, Jack’s fourth wife, is described as the
quintessential loving mother and spouse. Slightly
━ 246 ━
overweight, with a head full of messy blond hair,
Babette bakes cookies for the children, tells her husband
everything, and, in her free time, reads tabloids to the
blind and teaches a course on posture to the elderly. In
her apparent honesty and sincerity, Babette contrasts
with Jack’s previous wives, who were closed off and
secretive ‫متحفظ‬. Jack takes great comfort from Babette
and the openness that characterizes their marriage.
Babette, however, has secretly been taking an
experimental drug called Dylar. When first Denise and
then Jack confront her about the pills, Babette
completely denies any knowledge of it. Only after Jack
finds a pill and has it analyzed does Babette confess that
she has been sleeping with a doctor in exchange for
Dylar, in the hopes that the drug would relieve her own
overwhelming fear of death. The shift in Babette’s
personality, from open and loving to mysterious and
cynical, reflects the novel’s pervasive concern with the
fluctuating and unstable nature of identity.
Babette reveals to Jack halfway through the novel
that she, too, fears death, and has betrayed him to test
an experimental drug that promises to reduce her fear.
She wants to die before Jack, however, as she fears
loneliness even more. Her other major desire is for her
toddler son Wilder to stay the same.

━ 247 ━
3. Murray Jay Siskind
Murray is a visiting lecturer at Jack's college on
"living icons" in the popular culture department. A
New York émigré who finds some of popular culture
studies absurd, he wants to study Elvis [Elvis Bresley is
an American Rock singer] in the way Jack has studied
Hitler. He flows with ideas on American culture, which
he shares with Jack as their friendship grows.
Murray is a former sportswriter and current
college professor. Murray Jay Siskind is one of the
tough, media-obsessed New York émigrés who teach in
the American environments department at College-on-
the-Hill. Like the other émigrés, Murray is preoccupied
with the iconography of American popular culture and
dreams of someday devoting himself to the study of
Elvis. Murray makes no distinction between his
scholarly and everyday lives. He always uses highly
academic, intellectualized language, and he constantly
analyzes and deconstructs the mundane world around
him. For Murray, analysis is romantic in that it allows
him to elevate and celebrate the seemingly insignificant.
The supermarket, for example, reminds Murray of the
Tibetan holding place for dead souls. He believes that
television emits enormous quantities of spiritual and
psychic information, which people don’t know how to
read properly.

━ 248 ━
Murray is a satire of the postmodern college
professor, who finds deeply significant meaning in
everything—particularly things that other people
would consider shallow or irrelevant. Often, however, at
the heart of Murray’s lectures on television and
consumerism lies an accurate, if perhaps somewhat
extreme, perception of the contemporary world.
Beneath his deliberately constructed intellectual
persona, complete with pipe and corduroy jacket,
Murray is prone to generalizations and stereotypes.
Murray enjoys being contrary and pushing other
4. Willie Mink / Mr. Gray

Mink is the antagonist, the supplier of Dylar who
has illegally given Babette tablets in return for sexual
favors in a motel. Whenever Jack imagines him, he has
a hard time picturing Mink (or, as Jack knows him, Mr.
Gray).
Willie Mink is a shadowy figure who makes a brief
but significant appearance at the end of the novel. Long
before he actually appears in the text, we know of Willie
Mink as Mr. Gray, the corrupt project manager behind
the drug Dylar. Mink has been carrying on an affair
with Babette, who believes Dylar can alleviate her
overwhelming fear of dying. Willie Mink is both the
center of Jack’s jealous rage and Jack’s only hope of
getting Dylar himself.

━ 249 ━
When Willie Mink finally does enter the story, he
has already become a pathetic, half-crazed figure.
Deranged and debilitated, he personifies the corrupting
influence of technological and media stimuli, the novel’s
titular white noise. Fixed in front of a soundless
television, muttering phrases from old shows and
commercials, Willie Mink fills the narrative with his
own white noise, or babblings. For Willie, the
distinctions between real and artificial have collapsed
entirely, and he can no longer differentiate between the
two. Willie Mink is the ultimate casualty of this world of
simulations, where characters live almost entirely under
the illusions they create.
5. Wilder
Wilder is Babette’s six-year-old son, and the
youngest child in the family. Wilder never speaks in the
novel, and periodically Jack worries about the boy’s
slow linguistic development. Nevertheless, in his
wordlessness, he remains an essential source of comfort
for both Jack and Babette. More than any of the other
children, Wilder seems genuinely open to the kind of
“psychic data.”
Although he never speaks in the novel and has a
limited vocabulary, Wilder is nonetheless an important
figure, as he represents many things to Jack and Babette
-- ignorance of death, rabid consumerism, contentment.

━ 250 ━
His crying and highway episodes influence Jack's ideas
on death in profound ways.
6. Denise
Denise is Babette’s eleven-year-old daughter with
Bob Pardee. Denise is a sharp, often bossy girl and
continually nags Babette about her health. She is the
first person to notice her mother’s memory lapses, and
she discovers Babette’s secret supply of Dylar.
Denise discovers and investigates Babette's use of
Dylar. She worries about her mother's health and
refuses to let her or Jack have the medication back, and
eventually throws it out to protect them from
themselves.
7. Steffie
Steffie is Jack’s seven-year-old daughter with Dana
Breedlove. Steffie is far more sensitive than the other
children in her family and has trouble watching
television shows where characters get hurt or
humiliated.
Steffie has the most limited role of the family
members, but she sheds light about the fear of death in
odd ways. She refuses to take off her mask during the
evacuation, for instance, and she expresses anxiety
about being kidnapped by her mother.

━ 251 ━
8. Heinrich
Heinrich, Jack's 14-year-old sullen son, is an
encyclopedia of scientific facts and philosophical ideas.
He questions the status quo continuously and constantly
suspects conspiracy. Though usually reserved with his
family, he reveals himself as a leader during the
evacuation.
9. Howard Dunlop
Dunlop is Jack’s German teacher. Solitary and
taciturn, Howard lives in the same boardinghouse as
Murray. Dunlop, who lives in Murray's boarding house,
tutors Jack in German. He also teaches meteorology
among other subjects. Jack stops his lessons when
Murray plants the idea in his head that Dunlop finds
dead bodies erotic.
10. Mr. Treadwell

Old Man Treadwell is Elderly blind man, to whom
Babette reads tabloids through her volunteer pro. One
day, Old Man Treadwell and his sister, Gladys, go
missing for several days. They are later discovered, lost
and confused, in a shopping mall. He disappears one
day, and is later found with his sister in a mall (she later
dies from residual shock).

━ 252 ━
11. Orest Mercator
Orest Mercator is Heinrich’s friend, a nineteen-
year-old senior at Heinrich’s high school. Orest wants
to set a new world record for sitting in a cage with
poisonous snakes. He claims to be unafraid of dying,
which Jack, with his own powerful fear of death, finds
fascinating. Orest's goal is to break the world record for
sitting in a cage full of poisonous snakes. He also is of
uncertain ethnic descent, which causes anxiety for Jack.
12. Winnie Richards

Winnie Richards is a brilliant neuroscientist at the
College-on-the-Hill. Winnie helps Jack learn about
Dylar and Willie Mink. Jack discovers that she is almost
always impossible to find, since she goes out of her way
to be unnoticed. She's tall, awkward, and blushes
uncontrollably, especially when people refer to her as
brilliant. She believes death is necessary for our
appreciation of life.
13. Vernon Dickey

Vernon Dickey is Babette’s father. Vernon is a
rough, good-natured man, seemingly unafraid of dying,
who works with his hands and knows how to build
things. His skill and ability make Jack feel incompetent
and less masculine. Vernon drops by unexpectedly for a
visit and gives Jack a loaded gun when he leaves. Jack

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mistakes him for Death out in his backyard. He's a
handyman and has a chronic cough.
14. Sister Hermann Marie

Sister Hermann Marie is an Atheist German nun
who treats Jack for his bullet wound. Sister Hermann
Marie tells Jack that she doesn’t believe in heaven but
that she and the other nuns maintain the illusion of faith
for the rest of the world’s sake. She shocks Jack with
her explanation that nuns don't have religious faith;
they merely keep up appearances to help the rest of the
world.
15. Alfonse Stompanato

Alfonse Stompanato is the Chairman of the
American environments department at the College-on-
the-Hill. Stompanato is a tough, imposing personality
who, like Murray, is part of the college’s group of smart,
caustic, New York professors. He is the head of the
popular culture department who frequently leads
lunchtime discussions that revolve around personal
trivia and popular culture.
16. Tweedy Browner

Tweedy Bonner is Jack’s ex-wife, and Bee’s
mother. Tweedy is remarried to a high-level jungle
operative named Malcolm Hunt. Tweedy visits with
Jack for a while and confesses that Malcolm’s extended
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periods spent living abroad under assumed identities
make her anxious about her husband’s true identity.
She's unhappily married to her government agent-
husband, Malcolm.
17. Bee
Bee is Jack’s pensive, twelve-year-old daughter
from his marriage to Tweedy Bonner. Bee is a worldly,
cosmopolitan child, and in this regard she makes Jack
highly self-conscious and uncomfortable.
18. Bob Pardeē

Bob Pardee is Babette’s all-American ex-husband.
He is Denise's father and he is a businessman who works
for the government. He represents an All-American
father who likes to play golf and eat steak, though his
life appears in decline.
19. Janet Savory

Janet Savory is Jack’s ex-wife, and Heinrich’s
mother. Janet has moved to an ashram (a secluded
Hindu community) and wants Heinrich to visit her and
is known as Mother Devi. Before that, however, she was
a foreign-currency analyst for a secret group of
advanced theorists.

━ 255 ━
20. Dana Breedlove
Dana Breedlove is Jack’s ex-wife, and Steffie’s
mother. Dana is a contract agent for the CIA who
conducts covert drop-offs in Latin America. According
to Jack, Dana liked to plot and often got him entangled
in domestic and faculty battles.
21. Dimitros Cotsakis

Dimitros Cotsakis is one of the New York
professors at the College-on-the-Hill. Dimitros is a large
man and former bodyguard. He is Murray’s principal
competitor in Elvis studies, until he dies in a drowning
accident.
22. Tommy Roy Foster

Tommy Roy Foster is A convicted killer serving
time in a penitentiary. Heinrich plays chess with
Tommy Roy Foster via mail.
23. Gladys Treadwell

Gladys Treadwell is sister of Old Man Treadwell.
She dies soon after she and her brother get lost in a
shopping mall for several days.
24. Adele T.
Adele T. is a local psychic, called in by the police
to help find the missing Treadwell siblings.
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23. Sundar Chakravarty is Jack’s doctor.
8- The Major Themes of White Noise

The themes in this novel revolve around popular
culture and death. Therefore, one must look at those two
things as being interchangeable. This is not to say that
they always are, but that they sometimes are. By seeing
the grocery store as a place where death is hidden
behind the bright packaging, the culture takes on a
much more ominous tone.
Likewise, to see death as a media event, forces us to
examine our own perceptions on the world around us. If
we have created a society which is so intent on hiding or
masking death, and at the same time broadcasts and
replicates death ad infinitum, then what we have
actually done is make death itself a simulation. We have
made death into an event which accepted as not real; the
one shortfall of this structure is that when one reaches
that moment when death insists on being real (the time
of death), then everything collapses and the veneer of
culture is removed.
8.1. Fear of Death and "white noise"

The primary theme of this novel is that death forms
all aspects of popular culture. The glitz ‫التفاخر‬,
packaging ‫ عقد الصفقات‬, and showiness ‫ حب الظهور‬of
popular culture is an attempt to hide death beneath the
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surfaces, eventually allowing the people to forget or
become dulled to death.
The fear of death lies at the center of White Noise.
As Babette notes when she confesses her fear to Jack,
“What is more underlying than death?” Everything in
the novel—from Hitler to the supermarket, from the
airborne toxic event to the white noise of the novel’s
title—circles back to human beings’ primal, deep-seated
fear of dying. DeLillo’s novel details how modern life
attempts to push this fear out of sight, and yet, as in the
character of Jack Gladney, the fear continues to
resurface and fill us with dread.
Different characters in the novel approach death in
different, often contradictory ways. Jack approaches it
with terror. Heinrich faces death dispassionately and
analytically. Murray sees death all around him and
remains continually fascinated and engaged by it.
Winnie Richards notes that death adds texture to life,
while Jack and Babette would give anything to avoid it.
Jack and Babette speculate that death might be nothing
more than an eternal hum ‫همهمة‬of white noise: detached
bits of data, gibberish ‫غير مفهوم‬, and meaningless sounds,
all vibrating at an equal frequency so that nothing in
particular stands out and everything remains
potentially significant. However, this description could
also apply to Jack’s life and to White Noise in general.
While there is a general plotline in the novel, the bulk of
the book is comprised of digressions, tangential
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conversations, and snippets of overheard machines and
broadcasts. Though DeLillo avoids drawing any distinct
conclusions himself, preferring to leave the novel in an
open state, this close relationship between life, death,
and white noise might mean that death lingers
menacingly in the background of our lives, or it might
mean that death, as an inextricable part of life,
represents something we shouldn’t be afraid of. Both
attitudes seem supported by the novel, which presents
white noise – and the stronger, yet more elusive strain
of sound that people like Murray and Jack detect
behind that white noise – as simultaneously a thing of
dread and of intangible transcendence.
The major theme of the novel is that death lurks
everywhere, especially in the "white noise" of the
modern world – specifically in the waves and radiation
with which we surround ourselves. The airborne toxic
event makes visible this submerged death, and also
heightens Jack's already dominating fear of death when
it infects his bloodstream. DeLillo outlines several
possible solutions to humanity's natural fear of death:
by embracing and confronting it, as Tibetans and other
Eastern religions advise; by blocking fear through
"mystical" (since no one understands it) science, as
Babette attempts through the drug Dylar; by using
consumerism to deny it; and by ignoring it, although
only Wilder seems able to do this, whereas in the hands
of adults it becomes a weakened form of repression. We

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try to face death through crowds, through safety in
numbers, but we must ultimately face death alone.
8.2. Simulations Replacing Reality

DeLillo takes a quintessentially postmodern idea,
that simulacra (or simulations) have replaced reality,
and applies it throughout White Noise. The most
obvious example is with the simulated evacuation,
SIMUVAC [simulated evacuation]; although the first
run-through is for an actual emergency, SIMUVAC
views it as practice for an actual simulation. In other
words, its status as a simulation takes precedence over
its use for a real emergency. On its second, simulated
use, the people behind SIMUVAC continue to worry
over its use in simulation, not in reality. The other major
scene involving the dominance of simulacra is when
Jack and Murray visit what signs call "the most
photographed barn" in America. As Murray notes,
people pay more attention to the signs than to the actual
barn; they are wrapped in the simulated idea more than
in the real barn. Another instance of simulation versus
reality is when the family sees Babette on TV. At first
they are frightened, but soon realize what is happening;
only Wilder, not yet schooled in the way of simulacra,
continues to believe it is really Babette and cries by the
TV.

━ 260 ━
8.3. The Aura of Authority
In some ways, this is a subset of the simulacra
theme (see above). Murray observes in "the most
photographed barn" scene that the observers cannot
escape the "aura" of the barn. The barn ‫مخزن إيواء السيارات‬
assumes this aura of authority that controls the
observers. In the same sense, there is much exploration
in White Noise of how the media controls reality, even to
the extent that we ignore our own senses; the girls
consistently feel the symptoms of Nyodene D exposure
only after the radio informs them of what they are.
Tabloids ‫ صحيفة شعبية‬also have the same effect over their
listeners, who believe the mystical authorities of
psychics. Before we mock, DeLillo reminds us that most
people blindly follow scientists the same way, putting
faith in the technological language we cannot
understand. Jack also frequently discusses the ways
Hitler, through image-manipulation, could control
crowds by sweeping them up in his aura of authority.
Jack, too, tries to create this aura with his own
authoritative academic costume. Ultimately, DeLillo
questions to what extend we have control over our own
brains, and to what extent they are independent
chemical processes. The fact that one of Dylar's side
effects is the user confuses language with reality
suggests we are, fundamentally, nothing but these
chemical processes, and that a drug can overtakes our
senses and construct reality for us. Of course, this is the
━ 261 ━
main point of Dylar, to create a new sense of reality by
preventing the fear of death. That it fails in this point
suggests that there is something uniquely human about
fear of death that technology and science cannot fully
control.
8.4. Consumerism as Defense against

Death
From the opening scene of the station wagons
arriving at school, DeLillo explores the American
impulse to buy and belong to groups as a means to
prevent death. Jack believes that Hitler unified Nazi
Germany in this same way, by grouping them and
making them feel invincible ‫اليقهر‬, and we frequently see
frightened people clinging together in groups in the
novel (after the airplane scare, throughout the airborne
toxic event). However, consumerism creates its own
death – it amasses waste, a kind of cultural death – and
ultimately it leaves people feeling empty, as Jack feels
after his shopping spree ‫ انهماك‬. Only someone like
Wilder, who grabs at items off the supermarket shelves,
can be fulfilled by consumerism, but DeLillo suggests it
only works for him because he does not have the
capacity to speak or think abstractly.
I had the impression that consumerism acts as a
replacement religion for the novel’s characters. Religion
is a bonding element of any collective, but Jack
(especially Jack) has no faith (which he describes while
━ 262 ━
feeling awkward and listening to the Jehovah’s witness;
p. 135ff) and surrogates this with brand names. The
common product identification in these brand names
gives back this collective to the consumers; buy
shopping in the same supermarket, by eating, drinking
etc. the same products, a sense of community is
reinstalled.
From this point of view, Murray’s decision to buy
brandless, “white” products, is fairly radical- if
consumerist is in fact a surrogate religion, he is an
atheist. On the other hand, he defines himself in terms
of religion, as “the Jew” (W.N. 10).
8.5. The Ambiguity of Identity

One of Jack‫ط‬s main quests in the novel is to figure
out his identity. He is called "indistinct" by a colleague,
and Jack is honest about his need for Hitler and his
intimidating academic costume to fill out his identity.
Murray points out the obvious idea that Jack uses Hitler
as a figure "larger than death" to deal with his own fear
of death. But Murray also wants to use an opposing
figure – Elvis Presley – to complement his own identity.
Jack also uses consumerism at times to complete
himself, but these tactics inevitably fail (see above).
Another intriguing idea in White Noise is about the
ambiguity of racial identity in the modern world. Jack
frequently wonders what ethnicity people are, such as
Orest, and seems unable to deal with this -- everyone
━ 263 ━
becomes an "Other" to him, a figure identified by his
opposition to Jack. This anxiety emerges with Mr. Gray
(Willie Mink), who torments Jack mostly because he is
a hazy ‫ غامض‬- ‫ ضبابى‬figure in Jack’s mind. Since Jack is
unclear about his own identity – he is a Mr. Gray
himself -- he is further tortured when his antagonist is
indistinct.
8.6. The World is a Network of Mysterious

Systems
DeLillo suggests the world is a network of huge
systems that no one can understand, or feel the answer
is just beyond them. This is why people always want to
know about UFOs and aliens and believe in
conspiracies; it explains why the shoppers panic when
the supermarket shelves are rearranged, thus changing
the system around for them. This tendency is true
especially for Jack, whose wives have all been spies or
remarried spies; he feels they constantly know
something he doesn't. He also feels that scientists and
doctors are above him in other ways and communicate
to others through secret languages (note the coded
envelope he gets from one doctor or the flashing code
the SIMUVAC man reads on the computer). In same
way, White Noise can be read as a novel of systems. It
has a huge amount of abstractly stated ideas (mostly
from Jack, Murray, and Heinrich, but several others
along the way) that cohere with the novel's structure; it

━ 264 ━
is up to the reader to navigate these systems and figure
them out.
8.7. The Postmodern American Family

DeLillo updates the novelistic family for the
nuclear age of the 1980s. He takes previous conventions
of families problems (sexual frustrations, sullen
children) but gives them a subversive twist (the husband
and wife debate who will die first, Heinrich is the
smartest member of family and, with his receding
hairline, seems like the oldest at times). The family is
also called the disseminator of misinformation, a fact
Murray ascribes to the advancement of society.
Parenthood is also diffused in the Gladney family; no
single child is biologically from both Babette and Jack.
Moreover, Jack's status as a father is often usurped, as
when Bob Pardeē comes in and takes the kids out to
dinner. The family is brought together by consumerism,
a tactic that usually fails (as when they watch TV
together), but DeLillo makes the more subtle point that
at least consumerism.
8.8. The Tension between Reality and

Artifice
Throughout White Noise, the authentic and the
artificial often blur together, and substance seems
interchangeable with surface. This confusion between
appearance and reality represents an essential part of
━ 265 ━
Jack’s own existence. Although Jack has created a
venerable, professorial persona for himself, he remains
painfully aware of the total fabrication of this character.
Aided by the distinguished outfits and the weighty-
sounding professional name, Jack manages to hide the
fact that he lacks the ability to speak German, a
seemingly basic skill for the field of Hitler studies. Jack
is driven to learn the language only when an academic
conference threatens to expose his lie—not in order to
study his subject more deeply. Jack, in turn, is only
invested in Hitler as a surface entity and seems more
preoccupied with the cultural myths surrounding Hitler
than in the historical facts about the man. Jack relies on
Hitler’s larger, more powerful persona to bolster his
own fragile sense of self-worth and self-identity,
capitalizing on Hitler’s surface to build up his own.
Jack feels inadequate because, in his mind, artifice
is inherently inferior to reality. However, other
moments in the novel contradict this position. When
Murray and Jack visit the Most Photographed Barn in
America, for example, Murray argues that the barn
itself isn’t intrinsically significant. Rather, the fact that
countless tourists have come to visit the location gives
the site meaning and value. Each time a tourist comes to
admire this essentially empty and meaningless
structure, he or she adds to the psychic energy
surrounding the barn. The barn becomes relevant
because many people have invested in the image of the

━ 266 ━
barn. In Murray’s opinion, no genuine difference
between surface and substance exists.
At the same time, DeLillo satirizes postmodern
human beings’ inability to discern the genuine from the
fabricated. The SIMUVAC, or Simulated Evacuation, is
perhaps the most extreme example of the tension
between what is real and what is artificial. For
SIMUVAC, real events, such as the airborne toxic
event—which was itself caused by a derivative of an
original chemical—are used to prepare for later
simulations, and later simulations are used to prepare
for other simulations. In this environment, where
technology allows for endless duplication, it becomes
increasingly difficult to ascertain where reality ends and
replication begins.
8.9. The Pervasiveness of Technology

In White Noise, the pervasive presence of
technology proves both menacing and comforting.
Throughout the novel, in counterpoint to the human
babble of Jack’s friends, family, and neighbors, modern
technology asserts itself through the humming of
machines and the constant stream of media sounds and
images. Technology has become as much a part of the
texture of daily life as humans are themselves. In fact,
the two seem inextricable, as DeLillo’s narrative weaves
seamlessly between human and mechanical voices.

━ 267 ━
Faceless and beyond the grasp of the individual,
technology makes everyone anonymous. Sometimes,
this distance and objectivity seems comforting, as when
the ATM confirms Jack’s own financial calculations,
and Jack becomes filled with a sense of peace. At other
times, this detachment proves threatening, as when the
SIMUVAC technician, after punching Jack’s details
into a computer, manages to learn something of
incredible significance about Jack yet cannot (or will
not) give Jack any concrete information. The airborne
toxic event, a dense, threatening cloud of dangerous
chemicals, provides a particularly frightening image of
technology gone terribly, fatally awry. Yet even this
seemingly overt symbol of technology’s capacity for
destruction proves more complex than it first appears,
as the airborne toxic event paradoxically causes the
most beautiful sunsets the region has ever seen. The
chemical cloud is noxious and lethal, but it also creates
beauty. When Steffie mumbles “Toyota Celica” in her
sleep, a similar tension is being evoked, as a crass
marketing term becomes transformed, in Jack’s eyes,
into something mystical and beautiful.
9 - The Setting of White Noise

The setting of this novel is Blacksmith, a small,
liberal arts college town in Middle America. The college
is aptly named College-on-the-Hill. DeLillo’s classic
example is that Disneyland, a fantasy world, seems more

━ 268 ━
real to us than the real world. DeLillo utilizes this idea
throughout White Noise, focusing on a nation reared on
the simulated reality of the media which even had a
former actor (Ronald Reagan) as President at the time.
DeLillo says the idea for White Noise came to him while
he watched television news, and realized that toxic spills
were becoming such a daily occurrence that no one the
news cared about them -- only those affected by the
spills cared. We can see this idea play out in the airborne
toxic event in White Noise, when people are upset that
the media pays their crisis little attention, but it emerges
in subtler ways when DeLillo examines the consumerist,
technological atmospheres of death we create for
ourselves -- from our living rooms to our cars to our
supermarkets.
10 - Conflict in White Noise

Don DeLillo’s White Noise dramatizes a
contemporary American family’s attempt to deal with
the mundane conflicts of day-to-day life while grappling
with the larger philosophical issues of love, death, and
the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world. The
novel is divided into three sections. The real conflict in
this novel is with death. Babette, Jack, Murray, and the
rest all seem preoccupied with death and avoiding it.
The manifestation of this conflict seems to come at the
very end, when Jack confronts Willie and shoots him.

━ 269 ━
10.1. Conflict between man and his fear of death
Don DeLillo’s White Noise is a novel of guilt and the
conflict between a man and his fear of death. The main
character, Jack, teaches Hitler Studies at the local
college when there is a sudden outbreak of a toxic
chemical over the town. After the cloud disappears over
the town, they return to their normal ways of life,
however Jack is now polluted and could die at any time.
This conflict between Jack’s normal way of life and his
impending death causes a conflict within himself. When
Jack’s persona of strength and power gets torn away by
his internal conflict with his fear of death, the story falls
in to chaos and he starts to lose his mind over his
struggle with the thought of death.
When Jack Gladney first is plagued by the toxic
chemical and his subsequent fear of death, he is
subconsciously perplexed about how to act about the
situation. He doesn't know whether or not he should call
attention to his possibly terminal illness that could kill
him at any time, or go on with everyday life. He
eventually comes to the conclusion subconsciously that
he should go about everyday life as usual. As critic
Leonard Wilcox puts it, “[he] exhibits a ... ‘fear and
trembling’ regarding death and attempts to preserve
earlier notions of an authentic and coherent identity by
observing the tribalistic rituals of family life” (Wilcox
348). After the toxic event occurred, Gladney went on
with his daily routine per usual, and only pondered over
━ 270 ━
the idea of his possibly imminent death during time
alone, such as at night. by observing the “tribalistic
rituals” of family life, Gladney simply shoves the
problem he has to the back of his mind, effectively
ignoring the elephant in the room with every
conversation he makes. Before the onset of the toxin,
Jack and his wife are watching a television show about
some catastrophe in California. Jack shakes his head
and says “California deserves whatever it gets.
Californians invented the concept of life-style. This
alone warrants their doom.” Although an ignorant
statement at the time, it actually foreshadows Jack’s
own downfall. His trying to stick with the old lifestyle
and at the same time battle the menacing thoughts of his
possibly imminent death slowly drive him crazy. As
jack’s mind slowly starts to go because of this internal
conflict, he starts to try too hard to keep the normality
of his everyday situations. “Gladney attempts to ‘shore
up the ruins’ of an older order, ironically by chanting
advertising slogans as if they were sacred formulas”
(348 Wilcox). Jack’s ‘chanting’ of these ‘formulas’ are
his desperate attempt to keep his everyday life normal.
10.2. Jack's Psychological Conflicts
When Jack first finds out he has contracted the
illness, he doesn’t know how to react, so he responds
rudely to people who ask him about it. “I’ve got death
inside me. It is just a question of whether or not I can
outlive [live longer after] it.” (178). This terrible,
━ 271 ━
burdening question plagues his mind for the rest of the
book, although he doesn't like to talk about it. He
doesn't know how to react at first because he was never
taught how to react to it. Throughout his entire life, Jack
had been barraged [frustrated] by scenes of horror and
catastrophe by the television and various other
mediums such as the newspaper. Ahmad Ghashmari
puts it perfectly that “what is more striking... is that TV
transforms death and catastrophes into spectacles”
(Ghashmari 174). The media, in its portrayal of tragedy
and catastrophe as something of a literal ‘show’ to
watch, teaches Jack from a young age to be excited and
interested about these horrible things, but when it is
finally Jack's turn to be the tragedy, he doesn't know
how to react. This fantasization of terrible events
occurring is a problem plaguing society as a whole
throughout the book. “Through the process of
simulations and the tremendous impacts on the
superficiality and depthlessness of contemporary life,
technological devices, like computers, start to prioritize
hyper-reality and make it more real than reality itself”
(Ghashmari 176). This notion that hyper-reality is
taught to be more real that reality itself shows true
during the evacuation scene from the town. When Jack
goes to get tested for the toxic chemical, he is tested by
scientists wearing SIMULVAC suits. While at first this
might make the reader question weather or not the
‘toxic cloud’ is real, what is really disturbing about this
seemingly insignificant detail is that it could also be
━ 272 ━
inferred that the scientists were using the real-life
evacuation of the town to prepare for their simulations
and trials done in a lab somewhere. This ‘teaching’ of
hyper-reality being more important than reality itself is
questioned by Jack’s son later in the novel. Because
Heinrich is young at the time, he might have trouble
understanding what is going on the television and other
mediums of news delivery, so he still is able to question
why his parents see such horrors as spectacles to be
viewed. As Ghashmari puts it, “Heinrich...answers his
father that this contemporary life of [believing that
these horrors are spectacles] has found human senses
wrong most of the time” (Ghashmari 178).
10.3 Jack's Conflict with Disease
Before the onset of the toxic cloud, Jack is teaching
a Hitler studies class when he mentions “No sense of the
irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of
life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no
other animal knows, that we must die” (67). This foreboding
statement made by Jack encompasses the theme of the
entire novel. Before the accident, you could go as far as
to say that Jack was an animal himself, for he didn't
believe death was real until after the event. After Jack
is told about his tragic disease he has contracted, he gets
harshly transitioned from ‘animal’ to ‘man’ and is then
subsequently left to deal with the thoughts of death with
himself. The subsequent upset of the balance his life had
finally reached causes the balance of his subconscious to
━ 273 ━
slowly break apart until he cannot take it anymore and
requires an outlet for his fear of death. Since Jack
typically only allows himself to think about it when he is
alone, he treats it almost like something dirty that he
cannot let the rest of the world know about. When Jack
is caught in the act while on his back porch, his wife’s
brother-in-law happens to be in the back yard and tells
him that he needs to have Jack hold a gun for him for a
while. Although this is such a strange circumstance,
instead of Jack refusing to take the gun, he takes the gun
and chooses to carry it around with him wherever he
goes. By him carrying the gun around with him, Jack
tries to shore up his constantly crumbling persona by
providing an artificial crutch for his persona of strength
and greatness, which he previously had together by
simply being the leading Hitler Studies professor in
America. The slow and harsh breaking up of Jack’s
persona is also symbolized in the book by DeLillo’s
introduction of family turmoil after the onset of Jack’s
fear of death. “Where the once solid core of mom, dad,
and kids has given way to a loose aggregate of siblings,
step-siblings, and ex-spouses rotating in various
impermanent groupings” (4), says author Mike Osteen.
Mike hits the nail on the head with this because you can
tell that after the toxic cloud event occurs, DeLillo adds
man more family members into the mix, further
fragmenting Jack’s family life as well as his mind. This
is exemplified in the previously mentioned scene in
which Jack’s wife’s brother just happens to be in their
━ 274 ━
yard and with a gun, upsetting the placidity and peace
of Jack’s house and his mind.
The transition from an ordered system in Jack’s
life and mind get roughly torn apart by his jarring
realization of his probable impending doom. This fear
of death slowly becomes a defining factor in Jack’s
persona, even being amplified by his hardest attempts
to subdue his fear.
10.4. Conflict between Jack and Babette
The central conflict between Jack and Babette
Gladney is basically the struggle for control and also the
struggle for who is more afraid of death. Jack Gladney
throughout the whole novel tries to think that he knows
his wife Babette and tries to control her thoughts by
saying she is supposed to act a certain way. Jack wants
to be the one afraid of death and at the same time wants
to get rid of his fear.
In the story Jack confronts Babette about the
medicine she is taking; he wants to know what it is and
why she is taking it. He tells her that if she doesn’t tell
him the reasons, Denise will. Jack is very understanding
and tells her to take her time telling him. Babette tells
him that Gray Research was conducting human
experiments on fear and then decided not to conduct
them on humans but on computers. She told Jack how
she made a deal with “Mr. Gray” and in exchange to

━ 275 ━
continue with the experiment with Dylar (the drug) she
would give him her body.
Jack’s reaction to this was not the kind you’d
expect when your wife is telling you she cheated on you.
He was mostly calm, stayed laying in bed, and even
offered Babette some Jell-O with banana slices that
Steffie had made. Jack went on asking why Babette
needed this drug and what it’s purpose was. He wanted
to know why they couldn’t test on animals. Babette
answered, “That’s just the point. No animal has this
condition. This is a human condition.
11. Aspects of Postmodern Identity in

White Noise
White Noise ends with a greater sense of foreboding
as well as a simultaneous sense of hope. The "white
noise" is expanding, but the one character to which the
others look as a means to escape death, Wilder, is going
out on his own oblivious to the dangers that surround
him. Instead of focusing on the remote presence of death
in everything, he rides blindly into much more
dangerous situations.
11.1. The Absence of a basic reality for
Postmodern Man
A simulacrum (plural: simulacra from Latin:
simulacrum, which means "likeness, similarity"), is a

━ 276 ━
representation or imitation of a person or thing.
Simulacrum in White Noise is not merely imitation
and/or representation; its end result is often substitution
for, even at the cost of abandonment of, the original—if
such an original ever existed. In other words, that which
follows somehow becomes more “real” than that which
inspired the successor. Baudrillard further explains that
the phenomenon of simulacrum can also mean that
“simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential
being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a
real without a reality: a hyper-real.” (Baudrillard
mentions Disneyland, a fantasy land representative of a
world which never truly existed, and in the midst of a
place – Southern California – which already drips with
simulation and misappropriated nostalgia.) The map
precedes the territory; the abstract, the representative
of the real, is endowed with more significance and is
regarded with more austerity than the real itself. For
Baudrillard, there are four orders of simulacrum:
 The image reflects a basic reality.
 The image masks and perverts a basic reality.
 The image masks the absence of a basic reality.
 The image bears no relation to reality whatever.
Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise is
representative of the third order of simulacrum, a novel
in which the line between the simulated and the real has
been blurred to the extent that the “real” is not merely
masked—it never really existed to begin with, or if it
━ 277 ━
did/does, its importance is secondary to the
representation’s.
When Jack Gladney and his friend and colleague,
Murray Siskind, drive to see “The Most Photographed
Barn in America,” five road signs herald the approach
of the barn, and busloads of picture-taking tourists
confirm its label. Jack wonders why it is so popular, and
Murray explains that no one is there to see the barn
itself; rather, they are there to perpetuate and reinforce
the aura of the barn. Murray, in his theory of the barn’s
popularity (and reminiscent of Baudrillard), describes
the flock to the barn as an odd kind of religious
experience. Ironically, of course, the experience is far
from religiously inspiring: people are only flocking
there, to put it simply, because everyone else is flocking
there.
11.2. Television is a disturbing symbol for
Postmodern Man
Murray Siskind, in his worship of television as a
wonderful yet eerily disturbing symbol of Americana, is
once again the voice of Jean Baudrillard. Indeed, the
theme of the first section of the novel seems to be that
despite its reduction to mere “waves and radiation,”
television nonetheless possesses some strange, mystical
power which cannot be easily identified. “Waves and
radiation,” Murray says grandly:

━ 278 ━
“I’ve come to understand that the medium is a primal
force in the American home. Sealed-off, timeless,
self-contained, self-referring. It’s like a myth being
born right there in our own living room, like
something we know in a dream-like and
preconscious way.”
The mantras that not just television but radio also
(which operates on the same reductive scientific
principles) provide us with what Murray calls “sacred
formulas,” catchphrases like “Coke is it” and “Toyota
Celica,” the latter of which Jack hears Denise repeat
from the recesses of her subconscious mind in a dream
after hoping for some kind of ontological revelation.
Just as the awesome “barn experience” obscures the
barn itself, the second-hand information and jingles
that television instils in us result in misplaced, confused
reverence. According to John Frow in “The Last Things
before the Last,” the effect of simulacrum is to create a
world in which “the type ceaselessly imitates itself,”
making it impossible “to distinguish meaningfully
between a generality embedded in life and a generality
embedded in representations of life.” This is exactly the
effect of simulacrum in White Noise; the Gladneys et al.
live in a world, notes Frow, “covered by a fine grid of
typifications.”

━ 279 ━
11.3. Destructive Technology: the yellow
radiation of “airborne toxic event”
Perhaps the most obvious, and most important, of
all simulations in White Noise involves SIMUVAC and
the “airborne toxic event.” The town of Blacksmith is
evacuated, despite Jack’s repeated assertions that
everything will be all right, and his protests that
disasters of this caliber only befall the lower classes in
remote places. (“I’m not just a college professor. I’m the
head of a department. I don’t see myself fleeing an
airborne toxic event.”) As the evacuation proceeds, the
Gladneys hear the warnings on the radio about what
symptoms those exposed to the deadly Nyodene D gas
should expect. The list changes with each report, at one
time humorously including déjà vu. Jack begins to
wonder how much power déjà vu and the other
symptoms could have over him: “Which was worse, the
real condition or the self-created one, and did it
matter?” Jack’s conversation with one of the people
responsible for orchestrating the evacuation raises this
very question:
“What does SIMUVAC mean? Sounds important.”
“Short for simulated evacuation. A new state program
they’re still battling over funds for.”
“But this evacuation isn’t simulated. It’s real.”
“We know that. But we thought we could use it as a
model.”
━ 280 ━
“A form of practice? Are you saying you saw a chance
to use the real event in order to rehearse the
simulation?”
“We took it right into the streets.”
“How is it going?” I said.
The men in the yellow radiation suits are using a
real, frightening, life-threatening event as a substitute
for a simulation, a model. Jack is momentarily
confused—but only momentarily. His logical protests
quickly squelched, he accepts this bizarre explanation
nearly at face value and then asks the man for a status
report. Yet again, DeLillo shows us how quick and
willing we are to acquiesce.
11.4. Obscurity of once-fixed ideas about God,
Truth, Right, and Wrong
The characters in White Noise, then, inhabit a
world in which the barrage of information obscures any
truth that may have once existed and, worse, makes the
search for truth so difficult that it hardly seems either
worth the effort or even possible to achieve. Any once-
fixed ideas about God, Truth, Right, and Wrong, or any
other form of Platonic Ideal, prove unfeasible ‫غير معقول‬in
a world of mass production and unquenchable ‫اليهدأ‬
consumerism—there is simply too much else to occupy
one’s mind. And the distinction between what is real

━ 281 ━
and what is not real is no longer an obvious—or even
pertinent—one.
With God and truth either irrelevant or
unattainable (or both), what emerges in White Noise out
of the sea of endless advertisement, diversion of
attention, imitation, and simulation as the thing which
preoccupies the thoughts of the major characters—
Jack, Babette, and even Wilder—is death. Death is the
one thing for which there is no simulation. No team of
yellow-uniformed hazmat [hazardous materials] men
can sweep it from the streets and make sure the
population is uninfected; there is no SIMUVAC-type
organization that can study it and substitute a
reproduction for it; there is no equivalent of the
question, “Where were you when you died?” Jack and
Babette, among others, fear it primarily because they
cannot experience it vicariously ‫بالنيابة‬. Like the sword of
Damocles, it hangs over their lives, threatening to befall
them at any time. [This means that they are in a
situation in which something very bad could happen to
them at any time.] Wilder, while he may not be
conscious of such a thing as “death,” seems to be afraid
of something, at least, at the metaphysical level. Death
(quite literally during part of the novel) is in the air.
‫ قصة مثيرة للغاية وهي أن الملك ديونيسيوس الثاني‬sword of Damocles ‫قصة‬
‫ (القرن الرابع قبل الميالد) في‬.‫م‬.‫ ق‬344‫ إلى‬367 ‫حاكم سيراقوسة بصقلية من سنة‬
‫دموكليس درسا والذى كان‬/‫صقلية أراد أن يلقن أحد أعضاء بالطه الملكي ديموقليس‬
‫ وقيل أن ديموقليس غالى‬.‫وعضوا ببالط ديونيسيوس وكان متملقًا مغاليًا‬
ً ً ‫خطيبا ً مفوها‬

━ 282 ━
،‫سا‬ً ‫ فأراد الملك أن يلقن ديموقليس در‬.‫في وصفه لسعادة وحظ ديونيسيوس الملك‬
‫ وجد ديموقليس سيفًا معلقًا‬،‫ وبعدما أخذ مقعده‬،‫فدعاه ديونيسيوس إلى حفل كبير‬
‫ فقد يأتى‬،‫ فكما أن هذا السيف قد يسقط فى أى لحظة‬،‫بشعرة واحدة متدلى فوق رأسه‬
.‫ وهذه هى حياة الملوك‬.‫الخطر المستمر فى أى وقت‬
11.5. Death is not understood, and Nothing

alleviates fear of Death
What is more, in White Noise, society has failed to
devise a way to make death palatable. No advertising
slogan has been created which can make death any less
of finality. None of the quick blurbs the characters (and
we) overhear from the television in the other room or
from the car radio are able to offer any kind of relief
from death. Indeed, as members of that society, the
characters –as we – have been trained to be suspicious
of anything that could lessen their anxiety. Religion,
which once offered the ultimate peace with regard to
human mortality, is now a paradox: on the one hand,
inhabitants of the postmodern world have been taught
to respect and validate religion, whatever its form and
however eccentric or different from preconceptions; on
the other hand, however, society (in particular the
society in White Noise) is also quick to dismiss, even
mock, people who practice and gain peace from their
religions. Thus Jack, Babette, and others have a difficult
time reconciling their fear of the unknowable, death,
with their inability to accept any information about it,
an inability which exists because the postmodern
scientific knowledge which governs their minds and
━ 283 ━
lives forbids acceptance of anything that could be
explained as an “answer”; furthermore, that
postmodern scientific knowledge is constantly being
barraged by excess information, white noise.
11.6. Death is the only thing to be certain in
the novel
The only certainty in the novel is death. Jack’s
mantra is “all plots end in death.” Paula Bryant, in
“Extending the Fabulative Continuum,” describes
everyone in the novel as under an “ambiguous death
sentence.” They may not say so in as many words, but
the Gladneys, especially Jack, are very aware of that
death sentence as the exodus from Blacksmith
commences.
Jack’s having been exposed to Nyodene D and
having received a medical appraisal (even if it is
somewhat less than perfectly professional) results in his
personal death sentence becoming, strangely, both more
and less ambiguous. He is told that his exposure to the
deadly gas may or may not cause him to die sooner; the
irony being that there will be no way to know whether
Nyodene D will have any effect on his health until such
time that the effects should exhibit themselves.
Therefore, worrying is pointless. Unfortunately, the
exposure has a more definite effect: it terrifies Jack,
concretizing his fear of the most unknowable of
unknown things, death. As Murray, Vladimir to Jack’s
━ 284 ━
Estragon, later tells him, “Once your death is
established, it becomes impossible to live a satisfying
life.” Suddenly painfully aware of his mortality, Jack is
even more unprepared when he discovers the truth
about Babette and her memory problems.
11.7. The Numerousness and Diversity of
Information cause Anxiety and insecurity
The large number of information is not stopping,
but it is not constructive information. The Gladney
family turns the information assault into a habit of their
own, and, as Bryant writes, “The family feeds on its
exchanges of misinformation — remodelled from the
continuous chatter of radio and television—but is not
necessarily nourished.” This is demonstrated early on in
the novel in an exchange between Steffie and Babette.
“We have to boil our water,” Steffie says, citing the
explanation as, “it said on the radio,” the syntactical
shorthand proving sufficient in lieu of an actual reason.
“They’re always saying boil your water,” Babette
replies. “It’s the new thing, like turn your wheel in the
direction of the skid.” It is difficult to discriminate
between important and irrelevant information; what is
more, this scene (and the many others like it) show that
information in the postmodern world is plentiful, but
not fixed. Like so much else, it is trendy. But even the
truth of information which seems concretely,
unquestionably true is up for grabs. Just prior to this
episode, Jack and Heinrich argue about whether it is
━ 285 ━
raining. Jack, claiming that it is empirically obvious
that it is in fact raining, is met with opposition from
Heinrich, who employs Einsteinian physics and the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to prove that it may
not be raining, despite the fact that raindrops are
pelting the car’s windshield and being swept away by
the wipers. When Jack asks him for his version of the
truth as to the presence or absence of rain, his son
concludes, “What good is my truth? My truth means
nothing.” Everything is subjective, even the so-called
“facts.”
Unfortunately, as Ed Shane has argued in
Disconnected America, “More data does not equal more
information.” He cites Richard Saul Wurman who
identifies the following five telltale signs of “information
anxiety”:
 Chronically talking about not keeping up with what’s
going on around you.
 Feeling guilty about that ever higher stack of
periodicals waiting to be read.
 Nodding your head knowingly when someone
mentions a book, an artist, or a news story that you
have actually never heard of before.
 Refusing to buy a new appliance or piece of
equipment just because you are afraid you won’t be
able to operate it.
 Giving time and attention to news that has no
cultural, economic, or scientific impact on your life.
━ 286 ━
People are besieged at all times and from all sides
by information, like the family of Gladney, the
overwhelming majority of which is of no tangible
consequence to their lives, and their inability to
properly sift through that information to find something
of import results in the inability to discriminate trivia
from truth. Wurman states, “Information anxiety is
produced by the ever-widening gap between what we
understand and what we think we should understand …
the black hole between data and knowledge.”
In the face of this anxiety, Jack constructs what he
believes to be a comfortable, secure identity. He invents
a persona — J.A.K. Gladney — and struts ‫ يتبختر‬around
not only the campus but also the supermarket in his
peculiar academic apparel ‫رداء‬. He hides night and day
behind dark sunglasses. He pretends to know German
while studying, teaching, and chairing a department in
Hitler Studies. But underneath the false appearance he
has created for himself, he is more than a little
apprehensive ‫خائف يترقب‬. Jack’s insecurity is revealed to
us, as well as to himself, very early in the book when he
admits, while describing J.A.K. Gladney, “I am the false
character that follows the name around.”
11.8. Search for Power in Postmodern World
 Jack Searches for Power in Hitler Studies
In chapter eight, Jack makes it a point to learn
German, citing the reason as “shame” at being a Hitler
━ 287 ━
scholar and not being able to speak in the dictator’s own
tongue. Jack is engrossed in Hitler throughout the
novel. Hitler may have been the most rampant ‫مفرط‬
murderer of the century, but he also symbolizes a
unique power: more so than any other person in recent
memory or history, Hitler had the greatest control over
life and death. Millions died under his watch while
chosen others lived. Both of these foci [plural of focus]
of study serve as symbolic hiding places for Jack’s
existential apprehensiveness‫ ترقب‬- ‫خوف‬. He attempts to
use these shelters, representative of power, control, and
order, as havens from his painful fear of inadequacy.
(“How is Hitler?” a fellow professor asks. Jack’s
response: “Fine, solid, dependable.”) And, to borrow
another idea from Foucault, Jack tries to translate this
knowledge into power – power over that fear. His
security is seriously threatened in the second part of the
novel when the airborne toxic event increases in
seriousness and eventually uproots his family and
evacuates them to another town. His initial reaction is,
predictably, denial –he asserts no fewer than five times
that nothing bad is going to happen and that the cloud
of toxic fumes will not reach the Gladney house.
 Babette searches for Power in German language
Like the German language and Adolf Hitler,

Babette is another source of identity construction for
Jack. He is constantly defining her, speaking to her in
the third person and telling her what she should be
━ 288 ━
because that type of personality is precisely what he
wishes for himself and precisely what he wishes to have
in a wife. “Babette is not a neurotic person,” he tells her.
“She is strong, healthy, outgoing, affirmative . . . That is
the point of Babette.” But she has her own set of
mortality-related issues, which result in her exchange of
fidelity to her husband for an experimental drug. For
her, the fear of death outweighs her concern and guilt
for being sexually disloyal. She has become addicted to
Dylar, a pill still in the experimental stages. Possible
risks or side effects of the test-drug notwithstanding, her
fear of death is so great that she is willing not only to
take Dylar, but to sleep with its distributor, Willie Mink,
and repeatedly lie to her family. Like any drug habit,
her addiction to Dylar dictates Babette’s life, but she
continues taking it because her fear is too much to live
with.
 Jack's and Babette's Search for power is ultimately
unfruitful
The Gladney couple’s searches are ultimately

unfruitful. Babette knows that Dylar is only a placebo
but is willing to press on with that knowledge, and
Jack’s need for security, security which is threatened by
the toxic event and increased exponentially when he
learns of his stable wife’s covert instability, drives him
to the brink of insanity. Death is the driving force
behind these actions, constantly nagging them,
impelling them to drastic measures in an attempt to
━ 289 ━
ward it off. Why does DeLillo give them no real
alternative to these drastic measures? Because the
postmodern episteme forbids acceptance of such an
alternative.
11.9. Usage of Mysterious Drugs
 Dylar is a mysterious drug
One of the aspects of postmodern man is the usage

of new mysterious drugs. In this novel there is the
mysterious drug called Dylar. Dylar, as a solution to
Babette’s problem, is shrouded in mystery. Babette first
found out about it, she tells Jack, while reading tabloid
magazines to the elderly. She came across an
advertisement for an experimental drug. Despite its
dubious origins, she was willing to give Dylar a try
because what it promised, however preposterous, was so
appealing. If anyone should know better, it is Babette;
but fear is a powerful motivator. Further, as Bryant
mentions, DeLillo designs the Dylar pill like a flying
saucer, “its form drawing attention to its function as the
science fictional pivot of the narrative.” However, it is
more than science fiction: Babette, like Jack, is
searching for a way out of insecurity, no matter how
outlandish that way may be.

━ 290 ━
11.10. Religion no longer holds power of the
Past
Religion was able to make the impossible - the
miraculous - acceptable, but, according to DeLillo,
religion no longer holds that power. It is ironic that a
postmodern world which celebrates the numerous and
various religions that can be found even in a small
geographical space cannot provide its residents with any
certainty about any of them. Religion’s power is
cancelled out by its proliferation.
The only thing that could abrogate Jack Gladney’s
fear of death is a religion in which he could take
comfort, gaining the knowledge that death is not the end
of life. It worked for previous generations, but its
effectiveness is lost on this one. DeLillo surrounds Jack
with mysteriously religious characters, nearly all of
which Jack (and some of which DeLillo himself, with
something of a wink ‫ طرفة عين‬to the reader) is quick to
dismiss. One of them, who also happens to be one of
Jack’s ex-wives, has “been drawn to Montana, to an
ashram ‫ معتزل دينى‬.” He goes on to mock her: “Her name
is Mother Devi now. She operates the ashram’s business
activities. Investments, real estate, tax shelters. It’s what
Janet has always wanted. Peace of mind in a profit-
oriented context.” Also up for this treatment is
Heinrich’s friend, Orest Mercator. Described as being
of ambiguous ethnic background (which hints at an
exotic, mysteriously spiritual quality), Orest hopes to
━ 291 ━
break the world record for living in a cage with live
snakes. Should he survive sixty-seven days, the record
will be exclusively his. Jack dismisses Orest’s intended
goal as stupid and is not afraid to tell him so, and
DeLillo deals with him similarly: put to the litmus test,
Orest lasts four minutes in the cage and, as Heinrich
tells Jack, drops “out of sight,” presumably never to be
heard from again.
 Jack’s disdain of Judeo-Christianity
Judeo-Christianity has been the dominant religious

paradigm of the Western world for centuries. Its
various representative sects in White Noise, however,
are portrayed either primarily (by DeLillo) or
secondarily (by one of the characters) as quirkish, their
cherished religious beliefs downplayed, even degraded.
Jack shuns Judeo-Christianity. The family of Jehovah’s
Witnesses uses the evacuation and temporary relocation
in the barracks as an opportunity to convert, handing
out tracts and speaking about the coming apocalypse.
Instead of acting “normally” like everyone else—quietly
panicked and not-so-quietly upset—they are calm,
perhaps pleased. Jack has no explanation for them.
Later, Babette’s father, Vernon, visits and in
throwaway comments discounts both the Jewish people
(“What is he, a Jew?” he asks Jack about Murray.) and
the Latter-Day Saints (“Let the Mormons quit smoking.
They’ll die of something just as bad.”). And of course,
the nun in the hospital toward the end of the novel
━ 292 ━
reveals to Jack that not only is the Catholic clergy’s
dedication a pretence, their pretence is their dedication,
as they have committed their lives to acting as if their
beliefs were genuine because the masses need not
necessarily to believe, but to believe, however vaguely,
that belief is possible.
11.11. Bewilderment is the major aspect of
Postmodern Man
When all is said and done in White Noise, the
question is this: does DeLillo ever give his audience
something to believe in, a metaphysical life preserver to
grab onto? On the heels of Jack’s conversation with the
nun, we read the book’s final chapter. In it, young
Wilder rides his plastic tricycle across several lanes of
traffic on a busy highway while two horrified old ladies
watch from their window. But while the video game
creates a metaphor for life and death, it inevitably ends,
as all plots do, in death for the character on the run,
Wilder defies the odds and makes it successfully across.
What are we to make of this?
Just as Wilder’s cries earlier in the book were filled
with an odd kind of existential bewilderment, perhaps
even fear, as he cried “out, saying nameless things in a
way that touched [Jack] with its depth and richness,”
his escapade here at the novel’s end is also imbued with
a tinge of something supernatural. DeLillo describes
him as he “began to pedal across the highway,
━ 293 ━
mystically charged,” and when he reaches the other side
of the road he sits on the tricycle seat “profoundly
howling” once again. However, while Wilder’s feat
seems like a majestic, odds-defying accomplishment
which causes us once again to wonder if DeLillo might
be saying something about children’s closer proximity
to the supernatural than adults’ and Wilder’s own
indescribable knowledge of death, there are also words
which do not allow us to reach this conclusion
convincingly. DeLillo also describes Wilder as
possessing a kind of “lame-brained determination” as
he pedals frantically, and his howls are not howls of
triumph but howls of fear.
11.12. Nothing is worth believing in
Just after the nun tells Jack that there exists
nothing worth believing in and that anyone who does
believe in something is a fool (“There is no truth without
fools. We are your fools.”), DeLillo dangles this event in
front of us, daring us to believe in something – anything
– by using religious buzzwords such as “mystical,”
“exalted,” and “profound” but countering those words
with others like “lame-brained.” By doing this, DeLillo
challenges his audience directly by asking them what
they will choose to believe. After all, the seemingly
irrational, random events that have occurred in the
novel to this point, after Jack slowly morphs from a
quasi-normal family man into an insane would-be
murderer, after an archetypal woman of God tells us
━ 294 ━
herself that she and everyone like her is faking it,
DeLillo dares us to believe in a miracle. Cars fly by,
their horns blaring and brakes screeching, and a toddler
on a tricycle survives where so many frogs have been
squashed. Perhaps the previous events are to serve only
as the moral wasteland of a backdrop against which the
miracle occurs. Perhaps the book leads up to this
miracle as a way of offering us just a bit of hope. As
Jack, Babette, and Wilder watch the sun set and as the
men in Mylex suits continue to roam the area, there is
an odd sense of serenity in the pandemonium.
Then again, we are forced to consider Wilder’s
terrible howling. If he howled before at the knowledge
of certain death, his reaction less mature or complex but
borne of the same gut-level emotions as Jack’s, is he
howling here, as he sits on the ground on the opposite
side of the street, for the same reason? Just as Jack’s
death is indeterminately postponed (his exposure to
Nyodene D may or may not hasten his demise, but in any
case no one will know for sure until he is dead), his fear
remains unalleviated, and Wilder’s death has been put
off until an unknown date as well. It is possible that
Wilder’s frustration – expressed as best a toddler knows
how, in wails and cries – is a product of his knowledge
that although his death has been postponed, it has not
been cancelled. Sooner or later, his life will end in death,
too.

━ 295 ━
11.13. Postmodernism, both in reality and in
literature, is nothing if not ambiguous
Postmodernity, both in reality and in literature, is
nothing if not ambiguous. Despite not being a
“postmodern” writer, DeLillo has written a postmodern
novel: he has created events and characters that defy
definite identification and categorization. Anything we
apply to them, be it literary interpretation or moral
judgment, fails to stick. This is true of the final major
episode in White Noise just as it is true of everyone and
everything else in it. DeLillo’s devilishly clever ending
invites a plethora of conclusions which can be
substantiated while at the same time he defies us to
make any of them “stick.” But Wilder’s—and Jack’s
and Babette’s—preoccupation with death permeates
their lives. Miracle or not, the fact that Wilder narrowly
avoids his own demise cannot be denied. If Wilder’s fear
persists throughout his life, he may be as metaphysically
and ontologically frustrated and anxious as his father.
The cycle will continue – what alternative is there? As
Jack himself admits, “What we are reluctant to touch
often seems the very fabric of our salvation.”
11.14. Don DeLillo's Themes are Postmodern
Don DeLillo is not a postmodern writer in the
manner of John Barth or Donald Barthelme. At the
same time, his themes, particularly in White Noise, are
distinctly postmodern, as he concerns himself deeply
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with the postmodern episteme by looking at twentieth
(and twenty-first) century people’s ontological
problems and situations. As Scott Rettberg writes in
“American Simulacra,” “DeLillo’s characters
pathetically struggle in a world of indecipherable, de-
centered systems. There is no one system that is
universally accessible. In DeLillo's America, to
paraphrase Yeats; things have fallen apart, the center
could not hold, and mere anarchy has been loosed upon
the world.” Thus the characters in White Noise fail in
their attempts to redefine or recreate themselves in the
face of the only thing they know about the future: their
impending death. Jack Gladney is on a quest that could
end with new knowledge that might abrogate his fear of
mortality; the trouble is that the episteme which
governs his mind (and the white noise which perpetually
impedes his thinking) will not allow him to find it.
12- Motifs of White Noise

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
12.1. All Plots tend toward death

Early in the novel, Jack states that all plots tend
toward death. Jack repeats this simple statement
several times throughout the novel, and it serves as a
structural guide for the narrative. Since Jack is afraid
of death, it seems logical that he would avoid plots, and

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indeed the story he narrates seems to meander, without
any commitment to a straightforward, propulsive plot.
However, once Jack becomes exposed to Nyodene D. –
and, therefore, aware of his own inevitable mortality –
the story begins to gain momentum and starts to
resemble a conventional plot. Suspense, mystery,
infidelity, and a gun rapidly enter the narrative.
DeLillo’s plot becomes so deliberately structured that it
almost seems like a satire of narrative plots. Jack’s
initial statement turns out to be true—plots do tend
toward death. In that regard, the book’s structure was
evident from the start.
12.2. The Question “Who Will Die First?”
The question “Who will die first?” frequently
recurs in Jack and Babette’s conversations and provides
an insight into their relationship to each other and to
death. The question enters both the narrative and their
conversations abruptly, and it further puts the idea of
death into the story. Jack and Babette don’t just ask the
question—they debate it, comparing their potential
grief and misery. Each claims to want to die first,
because the burden of living without the other would be
more than either of them could bear. The irony,
however, is that each is so terrified of death that they
can hardly bear to live.

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13. Symbolism in White Noise
13.1. Hitler is a symbol of death and devastation
Jack’s interest in Hitler as a historical figure
relates only tangentially to the historical man, Adolf
Hitler, and the genocide and war he instigated. Hitler’s
importance to Jack rests almost exclusively in the sheer
size and stature of Hitler’s persona. As perhaps the most
hated and feared figure of the twentieth century, Hitler
has spawned a myth larger than life and, as Murray
notes, larger than death. The name Hitler invokes the
Holocaust and the massive destruction caused by World
War II, rendering Hitler the man a symbol for death
and devastation. Though Jack remains fixated on the
fear of his own death, he realizes that the wide-scale
extermination caused by Hitler dwarfs his individual
death. By wrapping himself in Hitler’s image and
subsuming himself in Hitler’s persona, Jack hopes that
he too can become greater than death and stave off his
insignificant fear.
Jack’s attraction to Hitler probably comes from
some reasons. Hitler is still a mystery to most people,
who wonder, at the simplest level, how a human could
be so full of evil, hatred, and the capacity for death.
Since Jack heads Hitler studies, and not a more general
Nazi studies, it is clear that he also finds Hitler a
compelling, mysterious figure.

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Relating it to death, Hitler reigned death down over
millions of people. He made a system of it, controlled it.
He even controlled his own death by taking his life.
13.2. Sunsets Symbolize mystery, dread, and
awe
The spectacular sunsets of White Noise, beautiful in
the beginning and almost overwhelmingly brilliant by
the end, simultaneously suggest mystery, dread, and
awe. DeLillo never elucidates whether they are the
products of toxins in the environment or part of some
other unnatural, or potentially natural, phenomenon.
Indeed, part of their power lies in their mystery, and
part of it lies in the quiet sense of fear they invoke. They
are beauty and dread wrapped into one, and through
the combination of the two, they become sublime. These
visionary landscapes seem to perfectly mirror the fusion
of life and death that lies at the heart of existence, as
depicted in White Noise.
13.3. The Postmodern Sunset symbolizes Satiric
Long silences
The idea of a long, literary silence is subverted into
sunset i.e. postmodern sunset. As a reaction to the
ineffable, silences don’t trail off into mystic, infinite,
universal reverie. Satiric silences “fall” and then
“extend” and then there’s “another silence” and then
Murray “doesn’t speak for a while.” The first thing to

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come out of Murray’s mouth is “No one sees the barn,”
a clear play on the common rhetorical saying “No one
sees God” – something I’ve only heard in discussions of
spiritual frustration. Jack and Murray head for the hills
and don’t experience ascension but rather,
depression. In this opening scene, I read a subversion of
literary convention and the beginnings of a critique on
the sublime brought to full fruition with the later
appearance of the “postmodern sunset.”
Whoops, midnight. Thoughts following deadline:
Doomster Heinrich keeps his distance from the new
sunset; Jack explains that his son detects something
“ominous” about the brilliant change in a natural
phenomenon. I get it; there’s not much for Heinrich to
protest. The “unbearably beautiful” sunset isn’t an
anomaly like the “black, billowing clouds” later given
the name Airborne Toxic Event. No outright
conspiracy, no dark hand of man here. If anything, in
its wake, the passing disaster has left a path of visible
beauty. Science provides no answers to the question of
whether Nyodene Derivative is responsible for the shift.
How many degrees of brilliance has been added to an
everyday sunset is unclear. It fluctuates, according to
Jack. Traveling to the overpass is an unlikely yet
popular pilgrimage. Ambiguity, mystery, veneration:
the Airborne Toxic Event has increased a sunset’s
inherent sublime qualities. I think it’s safe to say that
the overpass was never The Place to Be. When human
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ambition interferes with something as natural as the
come-and-go of a sunset (or the growth of produce or
the way we talk to each other), is it so terrible to take
advantage of the discovery, to stretch limits, to head
towards the unknown, risks and all? Visions of bright,
genetically modified apples as Jack walks into his
corner supermarket and sounds of friendly,
conversational television on an otherwise quiet evening
at home come to mind. Offering a spin on the sunset’s
origin story, Winnie Richards says, “[It's not] residue
from the cloud that causes the sunsets. It’s residue from
the microorganisms that ate the cloud.” Because the
essential sublime quality of a sunset is kept intact and
even enhanced despite disaster in White Noise, I’m
beginning to shed my bleak outlook on white noise as
negative interference. How about white noise as positive
intervention?
With Jack’s “don’t know” refrains and the
appearance of meaningful silences, the highway
overpass is holy in a way the biblically-charged barn
was not:
This waiting is introverted, uneven, almost backward
and shy, tending toward silence. What else do we
feel? Certainly there is awe, it is all awe, it transcends
previous categories of awe, but we don’t know
whether we are watching in wonder or dread, we don’t
know what we are watching or what it means, we don’t
know whether it is permanent, a level of experience to
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which we will gradually adjust, into which our
uncertainty will eventually be absorbed, or just some
atmospheric weirdness, soon to pass…What is there
to say? The sunsets linger and so do we.
13.4. The Airborne Toxic Event symbolizes the
danger of artificial technology
The airborne toxic event, caused by a train
derailment, embodies the artificial, technology-induced
danger that is characteristic of the modern world. The
substance behind the event, Nyodene D., is a derivation
of an original chemical, suggesting the terrible potential
of mechanical replication. The symptoms and
potentially lethal effects of the airborne toxic event are
never certain or clear, and in that regard they are part
of the “daily false-hearted death” of technology that
Jack notes. Jack describes the toxic cloud in
mythological terms, giving the event historical
proportions. Previous eras had death ships, as Jack
notes, while the modern era has a dark, billowing cloud
full of man-made toxins. This is our new symbol and the
new face of dread, the modern death ship with its
unknown and unintended consequences threatening the
edges of our lives.
I watched the audience. Folded arms, heads slightly
tilted. The predictions did not seem reckless to them.
They were content to exchange brief and unrelated
remarks, as during a break for a commercial on TV.
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The tabloid future, with its mechanism of a hopeful
twist to apocalyptic events, was perhaps no so very
remote from our own immediate experience.
Look at us, I thought. Forced out of our homes, sent
streaming into the bitter night, pursued by a toxic
cloud, crammed together in makeshift quarters,
ambiguously death-sentenced. We’d become part of
the public stuff of media disaster. The small audience
of the old and blind recognized the predictions of the
psychics as events so near to happening that they had
to be shaped in advance to our needs and wishes. Out
of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we kept
inventing hope. ) W. N. )
14- Protagonist, Antagonist, Climax and

Mood of White Noise
 Protagonist:
Jack Gladney is the protagonist. Not only is he the
narrator, but he is also the focal character.
 Antagonist:
There is no formal antagonist, but if we define
antagonist as the object of the protagonist’s struggle
and conflict, then death is the antagonist. Jack’s
constant fear of death and the morning when he believes
that Babette’s father is Death are prime examples to
support death as the antagonist.
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 Climax:
The climax of the novel comes when Jack tries to
kill Willie and in the process, he is shot himself. This
moment leads to the hospital, where both men are saved,
and the last vestige of hope against death is defeated in
the person of the atheistic German nun.
 Mood:
The mood of the novel is ironic. This novel
repeatedly ironizes contemporary culture and life. All of
the clichés and stereotypes about contemporary
America are presented as exaggerations, forcing the
reader to see these not as serious representations but as
ironic renderings.
15. Important Quotations in White Noise

1. Man’s guilt in history and in the tides of his own
blood has been complicated by technology, the
daily seeping falsehearted death.
At the beginning of Chapter 6, Jack considers his son’s

premature hair loss and wonders if he or Heinrich’s
mother might be responsible for their son’s thinning
hair, by having unwittingly consumed toxic foods or
raising the boy in the proximity of industrial waste. Jack
begins with a specific, particular observation but soon
brings the problem of Heinrich’s thinning hair into a
wider, universal context. Heinrich’s relatively
━ 305 ━
insignificant hair loss illustrates the novel’s greater
concern with the way technology has unwittingly
changed fundamental aspects of life. Jack’s individual
genes might be responsible for Heinrich’s balding, but,
given the pervasiveness of chemicals in the modern
world, it’s impossible to determine who or what, exactly,
is at fault. Man’s culpability is no longer obvious in
many situations, since to some degree technology has
begun to operate outside of man’s control. Technology
has not only blurred the lines between what we are and
are not accountable for, but it has also eroded away, like
Heinrich’s hairline, some essential part of our lives. This
passage sets the stage for the airborne toxic event and
for Jack’s eventual confrontation with his own
technologically induced death, via Nyodene D.
2. All plots tend to move deathward. This is the
nature of plots.
Jack’s closing statement to his seminar at the end of

Chapter 6 reverberates throughout the novel. The
statement initially refers to the assassination attempt on
Hitler, but it quickly takes on a larger significance once
it becomes clear that death is Jack’s greatest fear. Plot
can be defined as “a secret plan”—as in, the plot to
assassinate Hitler—but the word can also refer to a
novel’s pattern of significant events. In most narratives,
the central plot has a momentum, bringing the
characters toward some kind of ending or resolution.
Jack believes that all plots bring their characters
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toward death. We might take this formulation
metaphorically, in the sense that the ending of a novel
is, in some way, the moment when a novel dies. But Jack
seems to interpret this comment literally, believing that
he himself will die if he gets enmeshed in a plot. This
explains, then, why the narrative seems to take a
meandering, circuitous shape, actively resisting any
major plot development. Details accumulate and
characters develop, but not until the third section of the
novel does an actual plot become evident. Once it does,
however, the intrigue, mystery, and action quickly pile
up, and the narrative moves toward death, just as Jack
believed it would.
3. The system was invisible, which makes it all the
more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal
with. But we were in accord, at least for now. The
networks, the circuits, the streams, the
harmonies.
At the close of Chapter 10, Jack goes to an ATM and

finds that the bank computer corroborates his personal
accounting. For Jack, this represents a significant
victory, arrived at by hard work and good fortune. The
vast, complicated network of technology that underlies
everything from the supermarket scanners to the ATM
machines has, to some degree, validated Jack and his
sense of personal identity. The data have told him that
he is indeed who he thinks he is. The value Jack places
on such a seemingly small thing reflects both the
━ 307 ━
importance of numbers and technology in defining
identity, as well as Jack’s deep-seated insecurity about
what that identity is. He seeks confirmation wherever he
can, and if the ATM can confer a temporary sense of
security, then he is all the happier and stronger for it.
However, the quote also hints that this accord won’t
always be the case, and that at some point in the future,
the networks and the technology they represent will
turn against Jack.
4. “What if death is nothing but sound?”
“Electrical noise.”
“You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful.”
“Uniform, white.”
Babette and Jack’s conversation about the substance of

death in the middle of Chapter 26 is the first and only
time that white noise becomes specifically equated with
death. Throughout the novel, Jack’s acute awareness of
the noise that surrounds him has been an integral part
of his character and narrative style. For Jack, life is
made up of a never-ending hum of sounds, which
emanate from the radio, television, traffic, air, and the
people in his life. He hears sound wherever he is, which,
given his fear of death, is now understandable. Jack’s
fear of dying has been the principal motive behind many
of his life choices, from his study of Hitler to his failed
marriages. We can see now that this fear also relates to
his very perception of reality as an assemblage of

━ 308 ━
sounds. To some degree, Jack already lives in the white
noise of death he is so afraid of.
5. Another postmodern sunset, rich in romantic
imagery. Why try to describe it? It’s enough to say
that everything in our field of vision seemed to
exist in order to gather the light of this event.
In Chapter 30, Jack chases Winnie Richards to the top
of a hill where they both pause to stare at one of the
magnificent sunsets looming on the horizon. In the wake
of the airborne toxic event, all the sunsets have become
beautiful and spectacular. They are yet another part of
a postmodern world that, in its never-ending repetition,
makes the pleasure of any individual experience
impossible to convey. The sunset is spectacular and
beautiful, but those qualities are diminished if all
sunsets are spectacular and beautiful. The experience
still matters, but the words that are left to describe it
have been flattened out and emptied of any meaning by
repetition. An almost passive resignation inflects Jack’s
rhetorical question, “Why try to describe it?” In the
modern world, words can’t capture the sublime beauty,
though romantic images can be invoked.
 Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is, 'I know this
feeling. I was here before.' DeLillo
 "Our pretense is a dedication. Someone must appear to
believe. Our lives are no less serious than if we professed real
faith, real belief. As belief shrinks from the world, it is more

━ 309 ━
necessary than ever that someone believe. Wild-eyed men in
caves. Nuns in black. Monks who do not speak. We are left
to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief
must still believe in us. They are sure they are right not to
believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell
is when no one believes..." DeLillo
 Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being
brilliant.” – Jack
 “I am the false character that follows the name around.” –
Jack
 “Terrifying data is now an industry in itself. Different firms
compete to see how badly they can scare us.” – Jack
 “Society is set up in such a way that it’s the poor and the
uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-
made disasters.” – Jack
 Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It’s a
settling of grievances between the present and the past. The
more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence.
War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed
to say something good about their country.” – Murray
 “Once you’re out of school, it is only a matter of time before
you experience the vast loneliness and dissatisfaction of
consumers who have lost their group identity.”- Murray
 “You’ve said good-bye to everyone but yourself. How does
a person say good-bye to himself? It’s a juicy existential
dilemma.” - Murray

━ 310 ━
 “What good is my truth? My truth means nothing.” –
Heinrich
 “I think it’s a mistake to lose one’s sense of death, even one’s
fear of death. Isn’t death the boundary we need? Doesn’t it
give precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have
to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would
have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry
of a final line, a border or a limit.” – Winnie
16. The Crisis of American Identity in

White Noise
16.1. The Americans are in need to a Creed
Huntington, a scholar of political culture, declares
that America is undergoing an identity crisis in which
the long-term trend points squarely towards national
disintegration. Huntington declared, "The political
ideas of the American creed have been the basis of
national identity." To bring coherence and stability to
American national identity apparently requires a creed.
The creed alone is too weak to hold society together. As
he argues in the new book, "America with only the creed
as a basis for unity would soon evolve into a loose
confederation of ethnic, racial, cultural and political
groups.
16.2. America is a multiracial Society

America had become multiracial (roughly 69
percent white, 12 percent Hispanic, 12 percent black, 4
━ 311 ━
percent Asian and Pacific Islander, 3 percent other),
multiethnic (with no majority ethnic group), and 63
percent Protestant, 23 percent Catholic, 8 percent other
religions, and 6 percent no religion. America's common
culture and the principles of equality and individualism
central to the American Creed were under attack by
many individuals and groups in American society.
No society is immortal. As Rousseau said, "If
Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to
endure forever?" Even the most successful societies are
at some point threatened by internal disintegration and
decay and by more vigorous and ruthless external
"barbarian" forces. In the end, the United States of
America will suffer the fate of Sparta, Rome, and other
human communities. Historically the substance of
American identity has involved four key components:
race, ethnicity, culture (most notably language and
religion), and ideology. The racial and ethnic Americas
are no more. Cultural America is under siege.
America's identity problem is unique, but America
is not unique in having an identity problem. Debates
over national identity are a pervasive characteristic of
our time. Almost everywhere people have questioned,
reconsidered, and redefined what they have in common
and what distinguishes them from other people: Who
are we? Where do we belong? The identity crises of all
countries vary in form, substance, and intensity.
Undoubtedly each crisis in large part has unique causes.
━ 312 ━
16.3. DeLillo is concerned with late 20th C
cultural and psychological mechanisms
Don DeLillo seems completely preoccupied with
death and the arduous task of living with the knowledge
of death in his novel White Noise. Acceptance of our
finite, fragile existence over time is certainly not a
phenomenon unique to a single civilization or historical
era. Rather than discuss the inescapable mortality that
connects all humankind with broad, generalized
strokes, DeLillo is concerned with the particular
(peculiar?) late Twentieth Century cultural and
psychological mechanisms that attempt to define,
recast, or obscure the relationship between the self and
death. Technology, he asserts, has fostered a material
culture of consummation, of insatiable appetites which
simultaneously confirms and allows us to temporarily
escape knowledge of our mortality.
"We've agreed to be part of a collective perception...To
become a crowd is to keep out death. To break of from
the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying
alone" (12,73). Whether the dominant system is
desirable or reprehensible, there seems to be an almost
primal need for a structure of some sort. The very
human impulse to order, "to break things down,...to
separate and classify" as Babette puts it, is an integral
part of establishing an identity (W. N. 192).
Jack Gladney is, thus, ironically a critic and a
━ 313 ━
victim of this very dilemma.
16.4. The American community is not based on
Values
As Jack closely observes a long line of cars driven
by parents dropping off their children, he detects among
these people a sense of community grounded not in
common values or interests, but rather in mutual
recognition of familiar attitudes and poses:
"The students greet each other with comic cries and
gestures of sodden collapse. [. . .] Their parents stand
sun-dazed near their automobiles, seeing images of
themselves in every direction. The conscientious
suntans. The well-made faces and wry looks. They feel
a sense of renewal, of communal recognition" (W. N. 3).
DeLillo immediately highlights here the narcissistic
nature of the connections the people in this novel tend
to register between each other. The people in this scene
would seem content merely because they are among
others who are like themselves, but Jack recognizes
more precisely the foundations of their sense of
community. These parents and their children actually
appreciate the presence of others who are like
themselves because, in looking at these familiar others,
they see themselves. As Jack recognizes, they also base
their

━ 314 ━
"sense [. . .] of communal recognition" on a flood of
products, including the "bicycles, skis, rucksacks,
English and Western saddles, inflated rafts, [. . .] the
stereo sets, radios and personal computers; small
refrigerators and table ranges, [. . .] the junk food still
in shopping bags--onion-and-garlic-chips, nacho
thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms,
fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops,
the Mystic mints" (W. N. 3).
Jack's use of the definite article here signals his
weary familiarity with these objects, and with this
"spectacle," which he has "witnessed [. . .] every
September for twenty-one years" (3). (Lentricchia,
Tales 95) But the familiarity of these items is crucial to
the communal bond among these people, for, in seeing
others who also own them, they can categorize such
people as like themselves, thereby categorizing
themselves as well. Indeed, as Jack notes, because so
much is on display here, this
"assembly of station wagons, as much as anything they
might do in the course of the year, more than formal
liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection
of the like-minded and the spiritually akin, a people, a
nation" (W.N. 4).
DeLillo thus establishes immediately the novel's
interest in the relational, dialogic nature of identity
formation, showing that our perception of others
━ 315 ━
necessarily relies on categorical placement in relation to
categorical placement of oneself. Subsequent examples
of this phenomenon include the implicit assertion of the
white self via the explicit recognition of "non-white"
others; such moments show that in order to assert
themselves, implicitly white individuals, like members
of other, more marked categories, rely symbiotically for
their conceptions of self on the categories of people that
have developed in this country. DeLillo eventually
demonstrates that in racial terms, members of the
"white race" tend to rely on racialized categories for
"non-whites" when regarding them, but not when
regarding other whites. They thus seem to escape such
categorization themselves when regarded by the
dominant (that is, white) gaze (and certainly not, much
to their probable surprise, when regarded by the gaze
of an overtly racialized other). (Lentricchia, Introducing
Don DeLillo 229
16.5. The Death of Identity in White Noise
In addition to death, the title of White Noise refers
to another, subtler, sort of white noise - the muted death
of suburban white identity. College-on-the-Hill is not
only an elite academic promontory, but also a bastion
for white flight in which Jack Gladney's family has
taken refuge. Instead of John Winthrop's clear City-on-
a-Hill morality, DeLillo presents us with J.A.K.
Gladney's muddled postmodern inheritance of J.F.K.'s
civil rights legacy. Racial identity no longer demarcates
━ 316 ━
a simple binary between whites and Native Americans,
but complicates a nation in which all races stake a claim
towards American nativity. Jack's inability to classify
the Other in obvious racial terms feeds back into his
own identity crisis; unable to gauge what he is not, he is
left without the tools necessary to understand what he
is. This anxiety of faulty racial organization leaves Jack
with America's preeminent homegrown product,
consumerism, as a cultural machete.
16.6. Jack Gladney, the hero of White Noise, as
a representative of the American Identity
Don Delillo's White Noise is a novel set in twentieth
century Middle America. The story follows the life and
journey of Jack Gladney, a teacher of Hitler studies and
his family through their lives invaded by white noise, the
constant murmur of American consumerism. The
narrative follows these characters as they struggle to
live life distracting themselves from their sense of
reality. White Noise explores a host of character's deep
underlying fears and uncertainties that keep them from
discovering and revealing their true identities.
Jack Gladney adopts the persona J.A.K Gladney,
which he wears like a “borrowed suit”, to work as a
professor of Hitler studies. Jack does this in order to
control the fear of death that his “born” self cannot
control. Being J.A.K. gives him an air of “dignity,
significance and prestige” (W.N. 17). As Jack’s associate
━ 317 ━
Murray tells him, “You wanted to be helped … On one
level you wanted to conceal yourself in Hitler and his
works. On another level you wanted to use him to grow
in significance and strength.” (W.N. 287) Almost
contradictory, Murray seems to suggest that Jack’s
persona gives him both an escape from his fears and the
strength to confront them. What Murray may also be
suggesting is that the J.A.K. persona gives Jack a more
solid identity than his born self does, even though it is
essentially a simulation. Jack says of himself and his
persona, “I am the false character that follows the name
around” (W.N. 17), which both admits to J.A.K. being a
mere simulation, and also hints at his born self being
something of a “false character” as well. Perhaps
neither of the two personas is “true,” ruling out the
possibility of a true self.
16.7. Jack's Obsession with fear of the
unexpected and the Unknown
Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise tells the bizarre
story of how Jack Gladney and his family illustrate the
postmodern ideas of religion, death, and popular
culture. The theme of death’s influence over the
character mentality, consumer lifestyle, and media
manipulation is used often throughout DeLillo’s story.
White Noise gives us an inside look into the life of Jack
Gladney, showing readers that there is a Jack in every
family, and maybe a little bit in everyone.

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In White Noise the main character Jack Gladney
assumes the role of a constructed persona, an identity
separate from his original “born” (in the case of a
fictional character, “born into the narrative”) identity,
and he becomes insecure when he finds himself outside
of the constructed identity.
Perhaps, the character most responsive to death is
Jack Gladney. In fact, he is so consumed by his fear of
death that his ordinary thought processes are often
interrupted by the question: “Who will die first” (W.N.
15)? In Jack’s mind: “This question comes up from time
to time, like where are the car keys” (W.N. 15). Jack
finds the aura of death to be very noticeable and real,
and he relies on his consumer lifestyle as an escape from
his fear of death.
Jack uses the supermarket as his base for his
consumer lifestyle and a place to escape, which is
validated by the interpretation of his friend and
colleague Murray Siskind. Murray views the
supermarket as almost a holy place, an atmosphere with
rays and “white noise” everywhere.
"Everything is concealed in symbolism, hidden by veils
of mystery and layers of cultural material. But it is
psychic data, absolutely. The large doors slide open,
they close unbidden. Energy waves, incident radiation.
All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the
spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the code words
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and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of
deciphering, rearranging, peeling off the layers of
unspeakability. Not that we would want to, not that any
useful purpose would be served. This is not Tibet. Even
Tibet is not Tibet anymore."
It seems as if Jack distracts himself from
discovering his own identity, without it life is a mystery
to him and it makes death even more mysterious. As
Jack talks to Murray about death, he states that:
The deepest regret is death. The only thing to face is
death. This is all I think about. There's only one issue
here, I want to live. (W.N. 270)
Jack is obsessed with his fear of the unexpected. He
explains to Murry that death does not make his life more
satisfying, but only filled with anxiety. Jack does not
want to know any information predicting his own
demise, he is afraid of finding out his own "code", as in
the case of his medical report that forecasts his death.
There are many indications of Jack's identity crisis
throughout the story-- a more prominent one is that of
his identity as a teacher of Hitler studies. It seems as if
Jack is fascinated with a man so in touch with death,
and when teaching he hides behind large dark glasses
and a black robe. It is here one would think Jack would
feel most comfortable and powerful but instead, Jack
states how he "spent a lot of time in my office, hiding...
(261). Jack is afraid of reality, truth is uncertain and
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Jack can't handle it. Death is a part of life and the most
indefinite of all, and to distract himself of this, Jack
hides behind different masks and does things in secret
thus creating false identities that cause him to feel more
acceptable to himself and others.
I will now go on to Babette, Jack's wife, who also
exhibits her own strange behaviors due to her fear and
the uncertainty of her own identity due to death. "I'm
afraid to die,...I think about it all of the time... it haunts
me Jack, I can't get it off my mind. I know I'm not
supposed to experience such a fear so consciously
and so steadily. (W.N. 186/87).
Here Babette reveals a lot about herself to Jack, her
lurking fear of death she has had all along. Throughout
the story, it has been hinted at; her casual discussion of
death every so often and her fear of losing Wilder show
her great insecurities. It is her fear of death that causes
her to have insecurities about her identity, uncertainties
about herself and her life. The irony lies in how Babette
conceals her character. When meeting with Mr. Gray,
Babette would wear a ski mask to conceal her image.
Although we never really got a clear picture of Mr.
Gray, it was really Babette who tried to obscure her
identity. She is doing the same thing at home by
constantly wearing her sweat suit, one 'costume' is for a
sexual rendezvous, and one for personal purposes, but
both conceal her. Babette's various fears relating to
death cause her to hide in costumes and masks, afraid
━ 321 ━
of being exposed. It is as if she appears as one big secret
to everyone in her life, hiding one thing from another.
16.8. The central conflict between Jack and
Babette is the struggle for who is more
afraid of death
The central conflict between Jack and Babette
Gladney is basically the struggle for control and also the
struggle for who is more afraid of death. Jack Gladney
throughout the whole novel tries to think that he knows
his wife Babette and he tries to control her thoughts by
saying she is supposed to act a certain way. Jack wants
to be the one afraid of death and at the same time wants
to get rid of his fear.
In the story Jack confronts Babette about the
medicine she is taking; he wants to know what it is and
why she is taking it. He tells her that if she doesn’t tell
him the reasons that Denise will. Jack is very
understanding and tells her to take her time telling him.
Babette tells him that Gray Research was conducting
human experiments on fear and then decided not to
conduct them on humans but on computers. She told
Jack how she made a deal with “Mr. Gray” and in
exchange to continue with the experiment with Dylar
(the drug) she would give him her body. Jacks reaction
to this was not the kind you’d expect when your wife is
telling you she cheated on you. He was mostly calm,
stayed laying in bed, and even offered Babette some Jell-
━ 322 ━
O with banana slices that Steffie had made.Jack went on
asking why Babette needed this drug and what it is
purpose was. He wanted to know why they could not test
on animals. Babette answered,
That’s just the point. No animal has this condition. This
is a human condition. Animals fear many things, Mr.
Gray said. But their brains aren’t sophisticated enough
to accommodate this particular state of mind. (W. N.
195)
16.9. Both Jack and Babette are afraid of death
in a hysterical way
Jack then was starting to realize what Babette was
getting at. This is when the emotion kicks in for him.
Now he feels all the emotions he was supposed to feel
when she told him she cheated on him. He states, “My
body went cold. I felt hollow inside.” (195) He was
waiting for her answer. She tells him, “I’m afraid to die.
I think about it all the time. It won’t go away.”(195) He
responds with, “Don’t tell me this, this is terrible.”
Jack’s reaction to Babette’s fear seems misplaced. He is
more upset that she could possibly be more afraid of
death than him than he seemed to be about her sleeping
with Mr. Gray. He goes on trying to tell Babette that
maybe she is not sure that she is afraid of death, “death
is so vague.” He tries to tell her that it might be her
weight or height that is her problem. He cannot accept
that she is scared of death. Much of this could stem from
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what he depends on Babette for. Jack depends on
Babette psychologically more than sexually. So that
could compensate the reasoning that he was more upset
that she was afraid of death than of the cheating. He
depended on her for abundance of life and now his safe
place was gone. In the end of the novel Jack tells Babette
that he is going to meet with Mr. Gray to get some Dylar.
In reality he plans to kill Mr. Gray, only everything
goes wrong when he tries to do this, and it’s almost
comical to read. He doesn’t succeed in killing Gray but
ends up taking him to the hospital. No one ever knows
why Jack decided to try and kill Gray. Maybe he
actually was jealous that Mr. Gray had slept with his
wife or maybe it was because by killing Mr. Gray he
could kill his fear of death.
Even to the end of the novel not much about the
role of death in the eyes of Jack and Babette changes.
The book ends when Wilder is crossing the road on his
tricycle and cars are honking [making noise] and
swerving[change direction] to not hit the little boy while
he is in a state of oblivion, he doesn’t hear the cars, he
doesn’t hear the women yelling for him to stop, that’s
all just ‘white noise’ to him. Suddenly he falls into a
puddle [pool of water] of his tricycle and begins to cry
and he realizes that he brushed death for the first time.
Throughout the story Wilder represented a kind of
innocence not found in any character in the novel, he
━ 324 ━
was the only one who was not concerned with death or
dying, he didn’t understand the concept. Now his
innocence is gone and he is now just like everyone else
16.10. Jack is not attempting to attain
immortality But Fear and terror
Jack is not attempting to attain immortality by
creating a work outside of himself, he is attempting to
create a work of himself. He alters his physical
appearance to embody the immortal persona so that he
himself will outlive his own death. This concept is
addressed in the section on the airborne toxic event,
where Jack is infected with Nyodene D, the
personification of death, and states, “I’ve got death
inside me. It’s just a question of whether or not I can
outlive it.” (150) Everyone’s body eventually starts to
decay, so everyone has, in a loose way, death inside him.
Jack’s desire is to physically manifest himself into his
constructed persona, as his constructed persona is not
composed of temporary human flesh and has the
potential for immortality.
Jack’s separation between a born and a simulated
self also protects him from and reflects his environment,
which seems to often be confused between reality and
simulation. The SIMUVAC company uses the real
situation of the airborne toxic event to rehearse (or
simulate) future simulations of emergency evacuations
that they are going to run. The SIMUVAC worker
━ 325 ━
complains to Jack that the inconsistent conditions of
reality don’t provide for ideal simulation conditions,
where everything can be planned and mapped and
directed. This concept of the intention of simulation is a
reversal of common understanding, for here the
simulation is more important than reality, the flaws and
unpredictability of reality being a hindrance to a
successful simulation as opposed to the shortcomings of
simulation being a hindrance to a real situation. As Jean
Baudrillard claims in his essay Simulacra and
Simulations, “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor
of reduplication . . . It is rather a question of substituting
signs of the real for the real itself . . .” (170). Thus as the
ideal for SIMUVAC is to replace the real with the
simulated, it would be ideal for Jack to replace his
“original” self with his projected, improved simulated
self.
16.11. The Role of Television in Shaping
Modern identity in White Noise
It seems that television has a great role on shaping
the identity of people in White Noise. Television, in our
culture, is by far the most dominant medium of
communication and stimulation. The fears, the joys, and
the horrors of the world are all channeled through
television. As seen in the Rodney King police beating
videotape, television can incite in a population sheer and
utter rage and dark hostility. That same footage;
however, can also detract from the very anger it incites.
━ 326 ━
After countless times of viewing the footage, in a never-
ending Simulacrum of the same grainy image, the
masses became desensitized to its graphic violence. In
fact, the repetitive viewing of the footage during the trial
led to the desensitization of the jury and the acquittals
of the "guilty" officers. In White Noise DeLillo
recognizes television as a vital component in American
culture and makes it a major focus of the novel. DeLillo
uses media and more specifically television, as a symbol
of the American Simulacra and links the Simulacra into
his character's escapism from the violent realities in
White Noise.
Through television, there appears the idea of the
lacking of realness as one of the major themes carried
out throughout the novel White Noise by Don DeLillo.
For most people there are only two places in the world.
Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on
television, we have every right to find it fascinating,
whatever it is.” (W. N. 66)
The television in the novel White Noise is portrayed
almost as a character and plays a significant role in the
lives of the individuals in the story. The TV set is always
on in the house and emits a constant flow of words,
sounds, and images into the home. McCarthy depicts
the TV set itself as:

━ 327 ━
both a piece of furniture in a room and a window
to an imaged elsewhere, both a commodity and a
way of looking at commodities. (W. N. 1)
As a family Jack, Babette, Denise, Bee, Steffie,
Wilder, and Heinrich have their “Friday ritual, they
order Chinese food and watch TV together. Babette
made it a rule. She seems to think that if the kids
watched TV one night a week with parents or
stepparents, the effect would be to de-glamorize the
medium”…(16) Babette and Jack worried about the
amount of TV the children watched but, more, they
worry about the content on the TV.
16.12. Orest, in contrast to Jack, is willing to
confront death to discover it
To show the contrast of a character not fearful of
facing death and exhibiting his own identity, I would
like to discuss Orest. Orest seems to be more accepting
of who he is and willing to confront death to discover it.
Orest, Heinrich's best friend wants to beat the record by
sitting in a cage full of deadly snakes. When asked if he
is afraid if the snake will bite, he answers, "at least I will
go right away... I die in seconds (198)." Although Orest
has an unclear identity similar to Jack, he is in
opposition to Jack, he accepts his death. When Orest
fails to complete his mission successfully, he goes into
hiding. Orest's failed attempt with the snakes shows that
Orest would have been better off had he died boldly
━ 328 ━
than surviving meekly. Like other characters, Orest
does not fear "death" itself; it is the outside society that
holds the ability to stop him from doing what he wishes
that scares him. He fears someone putting boundaries
on his life more so than losing to death. Orest's fears do
not scare him from his true self, but instead help him
discover and overcome obstacles facing his true identity.
16.13. Murry Siskind's way to avoid death
appears in his cultured rebellion
Murry is a teacher of popular culture and friend of
Jack who exhibits a cultured rebellion as just another
way to ward off death and amend his identity.
He says that in the old days of his urban entanglements
he believed there was only one way to seduce a woman,
with clear and open desire ... he took pains to avoid self
depreciation, self mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety ...
the very things ... that are most natural to him ... he
works at it consciously ... (W. N. 21).
He says that in his natural approach, he does not
allow himself to influence his image to seduce women;
basically he has to work hard at being natural. Murry
has created a stimulation reality for himself, acting to
appear natural.
Is Murray Siskind a raving lunatic or a wise, but
somewhat eccentric man? Does he ever have a point, or
is he just mindlessly rambling? He’s neither of those
━ 329 ━
things. The first impression he gives is of someone who’s
in between, but that proves not to be the case. He’s
actually a very cunning man, one who has become the
“devil” voice of Jack Gladney’s conscience. Eventually
he’d like to become Jack. He covets not only his position
and standing in the university, but also his wife, Babette,
and he makes no secret of it. Why else would he do
something to lewd as to sniff her hair and grope her the
way he does? He tells Jack that the only way to seduce a
woman is with clear and open desire. Well, it don’t get
no clearer than that.
All those things become apparent later on. First, we
find out who Murray Jay Siskind is. He’s an ex-
sportswriter from New York. He’s Jewish. He was
briefly married once during his sportswriter days. We
know he is now a visiting lecturer on “living icons” at
College-on-the-Hill. Physically, he is “a stoop
shouldered man with little round glasses and an Amish
beard” (DeLillo 10). He’s hairy, but does not have a
moustache, only a beard. He dresses almost entirely in
corduroy.
Discussing Jack’s fear, Murray suggests that Jack
go from being a “dier” to being a killer. Murray tells
him, “It’s a way of controlling death . . . Be the killer for
a change. Let someone else be the dier. Let him replace
you, theoretically, in that role” (291). When Jack does
make his attempt switch roles, he is unable to fully adopt
the killer role as well, coming close to murdering his
━ 330 ━
nemesis Willie Mink, but ultimately rushing him to the
hospital after shooting him twice. Jack’s situation and
inability to completely become J.A.K. or a killer dually
suggests that the individual identity is in constant flux,
and that these adopted roles are not permanent
solutions to the problems of life and (post)modernity.
Like Jack, Murry wants to use an opposing figure,
Elvis Presley, to correspond to his own identity. He also
does things such as only buying generic brands as he
feels he is "contributing to some kind of spiritual
consensus (19)." Murry also believes "to plot is to live",
plotting is an attempt to confirm life, Murry may
conceal his true identity by acting a certain way, but he
does believe that a death ward plot can be a life
affirming one too. As Jack is afraid of plots resulting in
death, Murry considers the idea that one can become an
instrument of death, by taking death into one's own
hands. Murry may mask his character in a way to
deflect death, but he is not afraid to take interest in the
mystical concepts such as religion and science, the two
sources that can cause and possibly cure death itself.
16.14. None and Nothing can overcome death
It is sure that no one can overcome death. Dylar
drug fails to fulfill it promise of overcoming fear of
death because death is larger, more accommodating,
than any technology we can create. If we defeat death
on one front, it simply expands and fundamentally
━ 331 ━
redefines itself. It is similar to the "nebulous mass"
growing inside Jack; "it has no definite shape or form",
but death has a presence in the novel as a sound, white
noise. It fills the motel room where Jack goes to kill
Mink. "The intensity of the noise was the same at all
frequencies. Sound all around" (312). The normal
activities of everyday life mask this noise, but it is there
nonetheless. Only at certain moments of crisis or
conflict do we become attuned to it specifically. Is it as
Winnie Richards suggests, that rediscovery of self is
only possible in a moment of possible extermination?
Just like the airborne toxic event, we can create
internal, equally debilitating disasters for ourselves. Are
we more like the SIMUVAC crew who practices
responding to simulated disasters thinking that this will
prevent actual disasters from occurring? Do we live our
lives, dying simulated deaths each day, hoping that we
can forestall or even prevent actual death? Jack rejects
technology and rejects the idea of an afterlife. Jack tries
to become a killer instead of a dier, using Murray's
critical categories, but ultimately this fails as well. He
even attempts to rid himself of products and past
possessions which are reminders of his previous or
alternate identities. This residue of past lives drags him
down and makes "escape impossible" (294). Jack does
seem either incapable or unwilling to stand apart from
the consumer culture, presenting the reader with the
supermarket checkout line as a compelling metaphor

━ 332 ━
for life and hope.
"Here we don't die, we shop...This is the language of
waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the
living. And this is where we wait together, regardless of
age, our carts stacked brightly with goods" (W. N.
38,326).
It seems he has found his demographic niche in the
cosmic marketing scheme (50). Jack is thus capable of
critique, but is no less susceptible to the convenient
fantasies and self delusions which surround us as well.
16.15. The Effects of Fear of Death on identity
in White Noise
Fear in a person's life can cause him or her to
withdraw themselves, or hide from certain situations
thought to be associated with his or her underlying
anxieties. In White Noise, the fear of death is a
prominent factor that provokes the identity crisis these
characters face. It is not until a person can face, and
possibly overcome these internal fears that one can
obtain his or her true identity and understand truly who
he or she really is. Fear of death may cause alienation,
laziness, isolation, nervous breakdown and a lot of
disease.

━ 333 ━
17. Hitler and Elvis: Issues of Race in
White Noise By: Julia Robitaille
In his postmodern novel White Noise, Don DeLillo
characterizes Jack Gladney and Murray Siskind as
distinguished white male professors who focus their
studies on Adolf Hitler and Elvis Presley, respectively.
These two controversial subjects of study are powerful
white male icons and their presence in the novel
dramatize societal issues of race and privilege.
There is a heated scene in Chapter 15 of White Noise
where Professors Gladney and Siskind discuss the
similarities between Hitler and Elvis. Both were deeply
affected by the loss of their mothers and met tragic
deaths (Delillo 70-72). But what else do these two figures
have in common? They are both powerful, historical,
white male figures who each produced a fair amount of
noise, namely white noise. In this scope, the novel White
Noise “can be read as a novel about the noise that white
people make” (Engles 1). Although Hitler and Elvis can
be known for the audible noise they made- Hitler,
through his characteristic, loud, influential speeches,
and Elvis, through the music he created- they can also
be recognized for the figurative noise they made. Hitler
“made noise” by spreading anti-Semitic views,
considered heinous by most today. Elvis “made noise”
in the history of American rock and roll with his
controversial sexual appeal. DeLillo’s choice in these

━ 334 ━
subjects provide insightful “psychic data” (as Murray
would describe) into DeLillo’s criticism of society,
which gives power to the white male figure and listens
to what he has to say.
“White noise” can be defined as the actions and
speeches made by white people. DeLillo assigns Hitler
as Jack Gladney’s academic focus to underscore
society’s receptiveness to white noise. Of all the
historical events and figures of the Second World War,
Gladney chooses to solely study Hitler, an anti-Semitic
leader of the Nazi Party. In describing him as a
“medium of revelation” to the world, he likens Hitler to
a savior of sorts, giving him authority over the world.
Jack even keeps a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf on his
bedside table. Jack’s infatuation with Hitler is never
directly rationalized in the novel. When his daughter
asks him why Hitler is so important, Jack answers, “But
it’s not a question of greatness. It’s not a question of
good and evil. I don’t know what it is.” (63). Is it a
question of whiteness? Jack idealizes Hitler just as
society idealizes the opinions of white men.
As a Hitler Studies professor, it is striking that Gladney
fails to mention the Holocaust at least once in the
entirety of the novel. Gladney’s exclusion one of the
most horrific facets connected to Hitler’s identity
signifies his own bias toward white noise. It is almost as
if Jack is so oblivious, so deafened by the voice of the

━ 335 ━
powerful white man that he fails to see his most glaring
faults.
The absence of the Holocaust also reveals the
prevalence of white noise in the author’s life as well as
the reader’s. By failing to contextualize historical events
surrounding Hitler in the novel, DeLillo makes the
assumption that the reader already knows who Hitler is.
The reader is expected to know that Hitler was part of
the Nazi party and spearheaded the genocide of millions
of Jewish people in the Second World War. Although
this is not an irrational assumption, it goes to show that
once again, society is expected to recognize powerful
white men. Hitler, particularly, is instantly recognizable
after the sole mention of solely his last name.
Gladney’s lack of historical recognition of the Holocaust
reflects American society’s avoidance of its racially
charged past.
Jack praises Hitler and ignores the history surrounding
his unjust religious discrimination. Jack Gladney sees
his world through the eyes of Hitler, which is, by no
coincidence, the white male perspective. The situation is
an ironic one: DeLillo, a white male, writes of a
privileged white, male professor, focusing all of his
studies on a white man (Hitler), who is infamous for
perpetuating ideals of white supremacy. There is an
undisputable pattern here. As exemplified in White
Noise, society gives importance to the ideas and opinions
━ 336 ━
of white men, regardless of their sensibility or actual
basis in fact.
It is no coincidence that DeLillo chooses Elvis Presley,
another powerful white male (who is also recognized by
a single name), as the subject of Murray Siskind’s
academic studies. Murray even says to Gladney:
You’ve established a wonderful thing here with Hitler.
You created it, you nurtured it, you made it your
own…You’ve evolved an entire system around this
figure, a structure with countless substructures and
interrelated fields of study, a history within history…
It’s what I want to do with Elvis. (Delillo 11-12)
To focus solely on Elvis Presley in the context of rock
and roll is to completely dismiss his predecessors who
practically created the genre of rock. Although Elvis,
himself, has never claimed to have invented the genre,
he is often dubbed “The King” of Rock and Roll, a title
Murray uses in reference to Elvis in White Noise (72).
For Murray to focus primarily on Elvis is to ignore the
whitewashing of black rock music. DeLillo subtly
addresses American society’s neglect of its own
controversial racial past. As Engles writes in his essay,
“DeLillo evokes the white tendency to turn away from
the sense of horror that this history of whiteness can
inspire” (772).

━ 337 ━
In DeLillo’s novel, Murray ominously says, “everything
is concealed in symbolism” (37). DeLillo uses color
throughout the novel to symbolize and underscore the
prevalence of whiteness in society. Consideration of “the
irresistible ‘something’ in the symbolic background”
reveals messages of race in White Noise (Whitesell). Jack
makes special note of the “whitewashed stones that line
the driveways of newer homes”, the “white houses with
caterpillars dangling from the eaves”, and the “white
stones in driveways” in the college town, ironically
named Blacksmith (15). There are seemingly
unimportant items described in the novel to be white,
and it seems there is no other purpose for these specific
color descriptions other than to convey a subtle message
about race. Examples include Murray’s “lightweight
bag of white items” (53), the “small white tablet”, the
“white fences trail[ing] through the rolling fields” (38),
and the “white rat” involved in federal lab experiments.
In the supermarket, Jack’s wife, Babette, says, “It’s like
World War III. Everything is white.” (19) This could be
a reference to the white supremacy displayed by Hitler
in Second World War. The title, White Noise, is also
suggestive that all of the background information in the
lives of these characters is white. It is white people who
are able to create this ambient noise that is present and
uninterrupted in everyone’s lives.
DeLillo’s prose surrounding the color white at times in
the novel induce a feeling of disgust or horror. He

━ 338 ━
connects whiteness to death. When Jack thinks he sees
Death in his backyard, he “felt [himself] getting whiter
by the second” (232). He describes Death as an old man
with white hair and he asks, “Was the white hair purely
emblematic, part of his allegorical force? That was it, of
course” (232). Here DeLillo shows that the color white
is an emblem for Death’s power and wisdom. Not only
is power associated with whiteness, as seen earlier in the
novel, but so is death.
Perhaps Jack Gladney was lulled into this pattern of
thinking. The whiteness of Hitler and Elvis shrouds
Gladney from seeing the reality. Maybe Hitler’s
whiteness causes Jack to subconsciously overlook
horrors he caused. His whiteness gives him an air of
superiority and grace. Perhaps society simply overlooks
the horrible actions surrounding these powerful white
men in an attempt to preserve the white aesthetic.
DeLillo’s White Noise further demonstrates racial
homogeneity and the prevalence of whiteness in society
when Nicholas Grappa mentions numerous actors in a
film. He lists Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert
Ryan, J. Carroll Naish, Keith Andes, and Marilyn
Monroe, all of which happen to be white. If that isn’t
glaring enough, he then goes on to specifically mention
that the film was in “black and white” (205). Television
in the time period of White Noise is not colorized, so
Grappa’s comment on the colors was not necessary. His
rhetoric is meant to hint at race and not actual colors.
━ 339 ━
Jack, when speaking of his colleagues, says, “I had the
curious thought that these men were nostalgic for black-
and-white, their longings dominated by achromatic
values, personal extremes of postwar urban gray.”
(204). Perhaps the “achromatic values” he speaks of
here hints to the white homogeneity in society.
Elvis Presley and Adolf Hitler are linked by their
powerful white noise, and are linked once again in the
novel, through a conversation between Jack and
Murray. “There was only one topic of conversation. Sex
and death”, Murray says. “I would hate to believe they
are inextricably linked.” (207) Sex and death are, in
fact, inextricably linked, through Elvis and Hilter. Elvis
made white noise while disrupting conventional ideas
with his sexual appeal in performances. Hitler made
white noise relating to death through his radical ideas
on the genocide of Jews in the Second World War.
Hitler and Elvis represent the prevalence of whiteness
in society. DeLillo chooses his two major characters
(Gladney and Murray) to be fixated on these two
“inextricably linked” historically powerful white male
characters (Hitler and Elvis) who both have
backgrounds relating to white supremacy. This asserts
the fact that in society, it is white men who are privileged
to make noise, and it is white men who will be heard.
The fact that Professors Gladney and Siskind are white
men, themselves, furthers this point. Gladney and
Murray will continue teaching about their white male
━ 340 ━
subjects, and like Adolf Hitler and Elvis, their white
noise will be heard.
___________________________________
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Angelou wrote about Vivian Baxter's life and their relationship in Mom & Me & Mom (2013),
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Stanley, Alessandra (May 17, 1992). "Whose Honor Is It, Anyway". The New York Times.
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Ferrer, Anne (May 29, 2014). "Angelou's optimism overcame hardships". The Star Phoenix.
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Johnson, Claudia (2008). "Introduction". In Johnson, Claudia (ed.). Racism in Maya
Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Detroit, Michigan: Gale
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McWhorter, John (May 28, 2014). "Saint Maya Angelou: The Product of a Blissfully Bygone
America". The New Republic. Retrieved December 25, 2016.
Younge, Gary (November 13, 2013). "Maya Angelou: 'I'm fine as wine in the
summertime". The Guardian. London. Retrieved December 13, 2013.
Braxton, Joanne M. (1999). Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook.
Oxford University Press. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-19-511607-6.
"Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". World Book Club. BBC World Service.
October 2005. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
Jannol, Hannah (December 7, 2017). "The Little Known Story of How a Jewish Sears Exec.
Helped His African-American Neighbors". New York Jewish Week.
Retrieved July 9, 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
'Fresh Air' Remembers Poet And Memoirist Maya Angelou". NPR. May 28, 2014. Retrieved
July 9, 2021.
Bibliography (White Noise)

Billy, Ted. "White Noise, Materialism, and the American Literature Survey." 126-34.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations: Don DeLillo's White Noise. New
York: Chelsea House, 2002.
-----------------. Bloom's Modern Critical Views: Don DeLillo. New York: Chelsea House, 2003.
Boxall, Peter. Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction. Routledge, 2006.
Britt, Theron. "White Noise and the American Novel." 103-15.
Conte, Joseph. "Noise and Signal: Information Theory in Don DeLillo's White Noise." Design
and Debris: A Chaotics of Postmodern American Fiction. University of
Alabama Press, 2002. 112-139
Cowart, David. Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language. University of Georgia Press, 2002.
Second edition (paperback) with Cosmopolis chapter, 2003.
Dewey, Joseph. Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo. Columbia, SC:
University of South Carolina Press, 2006.
Duvall, John N. "White Noise, Postmodernism, and Postmodernity." 116-25.
Eaton, Mark A. "Inventing Hope: The Question of Belief in White Noise and Mao II." 144-57.
Engles, Tim. "Connecting White Noise to Critical Whiteness Studies." 63-72.

━ 354 ━
----------------- "'Who are you, literally?': Fantasies of the White Self in Don DeLillo's White
Noise." 171-95.
Fuller, Randall. "White Noise and American Cultural Studies." 19-26.
Ghashmari, Ahmad (2010): “Living in a simulacrum: how TV and the supermarket redefines
reality in Don DeLillo’s White noise” [online article], 452ºF. Electronic journal
of theory of literature and comparative literature, 3, pp. 171-185,
Haney, William S. II. "Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace." Culture
and Consciousness: Literature Regained. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell
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Heller, Arno. "Simulacrum vs. Death: An American Dilemma in Don DeLillo's White Noise."
Kraus, Elisabeth and Carolin Auer, eds., Simulacrum America: The USA
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Helyer, Ruth. "Taking Possession of Knowledge: The Masculine Academic in Don DeLillo's
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Johnston, John. "Fictions of the Culture Medium: The Novels of Don DeLillo." Information
Multiplicity: American Fiction in the Age of Media Saturation. Baltimore:
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Orr, Leonard. Don DeLillo's White Noise: A Reader's Guide. New York and London:
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━ 355 ━
Pifer, Ellen. "The Child as Mysterious Agent: DeLillo's White Noise." Demon or Doll: Images
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Cornel Bonca. College Literature.Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), pp. 25-44
Young, Paul. "No One Sees the Camps: Hitler and Humor in White Noise." 39-49.

━ 356 ━

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Faculty of Arts

‫األدب األمـريـكي فى الــقــرن الـعــشـريــن‬

Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

Al-Shams Printing Press: Shebin El-Kom, Menoufiya, Egypt

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

‫حقوق الطبع والنشر محفوظة للمؤلف‬

2017 - 16615 ‫رقم اإليداع بدار الكتب المصرية‬

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

C. Professional/ Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

8. Textbook and references

Instructor: Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

‫‪American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky‬‬

1. What is Modern American Prose? ------------------------------- 15

Chapter Two: American Drama in the 20th Century –- 79

1. Expansion and Rise of American Drama until 20th Century 79

Chapter Three: American Poetry in the 20th C ------ 105

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

Chapter Four: Don DeLillo’s White Noise --------- 207

1. Don DeLillo ------------------------------------------------------------ 208

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th century

The United States became an unprecedented global

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

1. What is Modern American Prose?

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

The function of naturalism is to present the world as it

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

The major elements of naturalist works are

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

 Alice Walker (1944 - )

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

 Toni Morrison (1930- 2019)

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

4. Jewish American Fiction

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

5. The Beat Generation (1940s -1950s)

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

 Pearl S. Buck (1892 -1973):

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

Pearl S. Buck’s short stories

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

Chin Yang Lee (1915 –2018)

 Chin Yang Lee

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

Amy Tan’s Novels

American Literature in the 20th Century: An Overview ▶ Dr. Radwan El-Sobky

7.1. Indian American Memoir Writers