RephraselyRephrasely
IntroductionSummaryThemesQuotesCharactersSymbolsThesesBiographyPlotQuestionsTermsInfluence
BackBackBack NextBackBack

White Noise Study Guide

Don DeLillo: A Concise Biography

Don DeLillo, born on November 20, 1936, in the Bronx, New York, is a prominent American novelist, playwright, and essayist. He graduated from Fordham University in 1958 and initially worked in advertising before fully committing to writing. DeLillo is renowned for his distinctive prose and his incisive exploration of contemporary American life, culture, and politics. His works often delve into themes such as mass media, technology, consumerism, and the nature of reality.

DeLillo's literary career began in earnest with his first novel, "Americana," published in 1971. Over the decades, he has authored numerous acclaimed novels, including "End Zone" (1972), "Great Jones Street" (1973), "Libra" (1988), "Mao II" (1991), and "Underworld" (1997). His writing has earned him various accolades, including the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. DeLillo is considered a key figure in postmodern literature and remains an influential voice in contemporary fiction.

Historical and Literary Context for "White Noise"

Published in 1985, "White Noise" is often regarded as one of Don DeLillo's most important works and a quintessential postmodern novel. The book is set against the backdrop of the 1980s, a decade marked by significant technological advancements, the rise of consumer culture, and heightened media saturation. These elements are central to the novel's themes and narrative.

The 1980s in America were characterized by a burgeoning fascination with technology and the proliferation of mass media, both of which are central to the novel's exploration of how these forces shape human perception and reality. During this period, there was also an increasing awareness of environmental issues and the potential dangers posed by industrial and technological progress, themes that are vividly depicted in the novel's "Airborne Toxic Event."

Literarily, "White Noise" is situated within the postmodern tradition, distinguished by its fragmented structure, metafictional elements, and a skeptical attitude towards grand narratives and objective truth. The novel's protagonist, Jack Gladney, is a professor of Hitler Studies at a small liberal arts college, and his life is saturated with the "white noise" of media and consumer culture. Through Jack's experiences, DeLillo critiques the pervasive influence of technology and media on individual consciousness and social life.

"White Noise" received critical acclaim for its incisive social commentary, dark humor, and innovative narrative techniques. It remains a seminal work in DeLillo's oeuvre and a significant contribution to American literature, capturing the anxieties and absurdities of late 20th-century life.

Want to generate unlimited academic essays?

  • unlock
    Unlock endless possibilities for your academic writing!
  • tools
    Our tool helps you craft high-quality, original essays in no time. Whether you're tackling complex topics or need help structuring your thoughts, we've got you covered. Start creating with ease and elevate your academic performance today!

About Rephrasely

Getting your wording just right

Paraphrasing is a natural part of the writing process as it helps you clarify your thinking and suit your words to your audience. Using a Rephrasely helps structure and streamline this work, and our paraphrase tool offers 20 modes, many of them free, for accomplishing just this. The 20 modes we offer are diverse, including a summarize tool, a free grammar checker, a mode to simplify text, and a sentence shortener. There are sentence rephrasers and paraphrase rephrase tools, and we pride ourselves on having both, since our reword generator accounts for context at both the sentence and paragraph levels.

When you google paraphrase you will get a variety of results, from a free Rephrasely, to an article spinner, to a general phrase tool, and it can be hard to determine which of these rephrase tools will best help you complete your work. If you simply need to get a word rephrase, that is, reword only small elements within the sentence, many tools will suffice, but there is the risk that you end up with a tool that does not consider context and produces very awkward and ungrammatical sentences. Rephrasing is very much an art, and we’ve built our paraphrase bot to produce the most correct results in 20 modes in over 100 languages, making it the best paraphrasing tool at an exceptionally low cost. So whether you need to paraphrase deutsch, paraphrase greek, or paraphrase bahasa melayu, the next time you think, I need something to paraphrase this for me, you’ll know where to turn.

From keywords to paragraphs

Generating paragraphs with unique ideas can be challenging, and too often writers get stuck at this stage of the writing process. With our paragraph tool, you can enter keywords and let our AI generate paragraphs for you, so that you can have something to work with, refine the output, and become more engaged in your writing.

A paragraph generator creates links between your ideas, such that the output is sensible, unique, and stimulating, very close to what you would expect a thoughtful human paragraph writer to produce.

Paragraph makers are nice, but what about a short story generator? Because our AI is generalized, it serves a story generator, an essay generator, a poem generator, and much more. To generate compelling stories, you should provide the story generator with useful keywords from which it can develop plot elements, including characters, setting details, and any situational information. To generate reasonably good essays, you should likewise provide the essay maker with details around argumentative positions and any other pertinent ideas. If you more specifically want an introduction paragraph generator or conclusion paragraph generator, you can provide starter text and keywords that will best enable our essay creator to produce them.

You may well ask, “is this essay generator free?” Everything on this site is free within a 3-day trial, so you can test and develop confidence in our products. You may also be wondering where this is an essay automatic writer or if it will take a while to get results. All results appear within a matter of seconds, so you can move through your work as quickly as possible.

You may have professional needs for creating paragraphs as well, such as those needed for cover letter. Most of the time a cover letter template includes information that is not relevant to you; by using your own keywords, we can produce cover letter examples that are relevant to your use case and often require very little editing. By using this service, you can also learn how to write a cover letter and achieve the cover letter format you need.

Plagiarism checker free

Like everything else on our site, you can check plagiarism free within a trial, which is a great opportunity for those who want to check a paper for plagiarism without committing to paying before they see results. This free plagiarism checker is great for students and clearly indicates how to check for plagiarism by highlighting areas of similarity between the two texts. Just to be sure you are not accidentally plagiarizing, be sure to check all of your paraphrases as well.