Don DeLillo's novel White Noise addresses the primal fear of death just as its characters do: by nullifying or downplaying this otherwise terrifying human phenomenon. What is called "white noise" in the novel is the barrage of modern life that blocks out much of what it takes to be human. The idea that a pill can remove such an instinctive emotion as the fear of death surprises any reader. Removing this fear means removing much of our own evolution. By not addressing the psychological necessity of fear of death, the characters avoid much of their humanity. The author further emphasizes this loss of humanity by avoiding the narration of first-person death experiences. By trivializing information about death, DeLillo manages to make it distanced and less daunting. Here, dath is defanged to the point of commercialization. DeLillo manages to commodify something as instinctive as the fear of death to criticize the direction in which the modern world is moving away from basic human instinct. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The novel talks about death in terms of characters and plot using a variety of methods that work on different levels of the psyche. Psychologically, discussing death as a competition as Jack and Babette do takes the edge off such an impending doom. If death becomes a race, triumph comes at the finish line and not apprehension. In the same sense, writing about death as freely as DeLillo does also removes fear. As Winnie says, this fear is a necessity. People can only know life when they are faced with the alternative. If they live without fear of death, they live without motivation. The novel is also characterized by its avoidance of the theme of death, as demonstrated in the various euphemisms for what is essentially a cloud of death. Human nature therefore creates the need to understand death to overcome it, as represented by Denise's Doctor's Guide, or to tame it, as represented by Jack's idea that good posture wards off mortality. Murray surprisingly suggests that technology can provide an escape from death. Although technology is only a way to hide decaying bodies, on the contrary it prolongs life. In the modern world, death is just a change in the census; it has gradually lost some of its spiritual meaning as it has been dissected and analyzed. Since death has been something far from common vision, from the home to hospitals, people have become increasingly strangers to fatality. Fear is a necessity, and because the SIMUVAC practice has removed this fear, people put themselves in danger by becoming overconfident. So much of what it means to be human lies in confronting the vast abyss that humans face every time we get closer and closer to the end. Interestingly, in a novel with a central theme of dealing with death, no deaths are actually witnessed directly. Episodes in which death is entirely possible do not directly concern the victims' final moments. The toxic spill, the asylum fire, and the plane landing are all events that would very likely result in at least several deaths. The mentioned death is removed as if it were broadcast through the nightly news. Every modern degree of repression puts us one step closer to confronting a primordial instinct. The death of Mr. Treadwell's sister is marked only by a brief mention among a series of obituaries. For a novel.