White Noise

While DeLillo originally wanted to call the book Panasonic, White Noise is an arguably more evocative and precise title. It comprehensively describes the aural and metaphysical environment in which the characters reside, a thick yet ultimately toneless amalgamation of sounds emanating from appliances, radios, televisions, supermarket scanners, automating sliding doors, and incomprehensible human voices. The artificial and human components of the noise often merge, as in Chapter 17, when Steffie sits in front of the television set, moving her lips to match the words emanating from the speakers, or in the uncanny sight of seeing Babette on TV at the end of Chapter 20.

White noise is also the name given to death itself, as Jack and Babette theorize that being dead is akin to being enveloped by an eternal buzz, uniform and toneless. Events late in the novel suggest that the noise is less a way of describing the experience of death and more a medium by which the dead communicate with the living. As Jack grows nearer to his attempted murder of Willie Mink, the buzz grows louder and more powerful. And in the final chapter, Jack describes the holographic scanners at the supermarket as “the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living” (310).