I’m planning something totally different for my presentation on White Noise, but I did come across one interesting motif in my research. I wanted to share it here because I didn’t know if I could work it in.<\/p>\n
There seems to be a water motif in White Noise. I think this is most obvious at the end, when Jack sets out to kill Mr. Gray, or Willie Minks. There are several lines about what the rain is doing outside: "Water fell to [the] earth in drops" (304) and "Water fell in drops, surfaces gleamed" (305). Additionally: "Water struck the roof in spherical masses, globules, splashing drams" (307) and "Water struck the roof in elongated orbs, splashing drams" (310). These passages struck me, as I found some coincidental information in my research. <\/p>\n
On a lark, I typed in "white noise" on Google. Among the references to the novel, I also found a good number of links that discussed actual white noise, or white sound. One website in particular,www.purewhitenoise.com<\/a>, interested me the most. This website describes white noise as: "White noise is actually a sound frequency or a signal that one hears as a gentle hiss, similar to the sound of wind rustling through trees, a waterfall, radio static or the ocean surf". Their examples of a waterfall and ocean surf definitely tie in with the type of merchandise they sell – white noise CDs, and a fair number of them leaning towards water sounds. A few examples are: Wonderful Rain, Restful Waves, Distant Thunderstorm, Soothing Shower, and Sea of Serenity. <\/p>\n The water-related passages didn’t surprise me then, considering what else the website had to say about white noise: "To use a simple analogy, the color white contains the whole spectrum of colors of light. Similarly, white noise is created by using the entire spectrum of frequencies the human ear can hear". This goes along with what Babette postulates in the novel, when she is relating to Jack the story of the Dylar and Mr. Gray: "What if death is nothing but sound?" (198), to which Jack responds: "Electrical noise" (198). <\/p>\n The Google search on "white noise" also provided some links on a movie that came out this year, called White Noise (www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0375210\/<\/a>). In this movie, Michael Keaton’s wife goes missing. While she is missing, he experiences peculiar phenomenons, like radios coming on (much like in the novel White Noise, on page 195) and issuing blasts of static. Eventually, a creepy man helps him understand that his wife, through various technology, is trying to contact him from "the other side" using EVP, or electronic voice phenomena. One individual, in commenting on this movie, pointed out that there was a water motif in this film (a waterfall near Michael Keaton’s house, etc.). <\/p>\n There are many, many other themes\/motifs to explore in the novel, but I hope that this one has provided some food for thought. I’ll look forward to an interesting discussion on Tuesday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m planning something totally different for my presentation on White Noise, but I did come across one interesting motif in my research. I wanted to share it here because I didn’t know if I could work it in. There seems to be a water motif in White Noise. I think this is most obvious at … Continue reading “White Noise” Thought Blips<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}