Category: Reflections

The character of Keith really threw this story into a loop for me, so far. When he was first mentioned, Lauren spoke of him so shortly that I did not at all expect him to become anywhere near as important a character as he became by chapter 9. The focus up until the moment in… Continue reading Parable of the Sower

Journeying is an especially predominant motif in Parable of the Sower, metaphorically and physically transporting Lauren and other major characters from one point of the novel or state of mind to the other. There is the obvious coming of age journey that Lauren undertakes, wherein a fourteen-year old girl from a sheltered life develops into… Continue reading Journey

Lauren is a total protagonist. Within the first few pages, she establishes herself as a strong individual. At age 7, she tells her [step]mother she prefers the stars rather than the city lights. To her mother, city lights symbolize “lights, progress, growth…The stars are free. I’d rather have the city lights back myself, the sooner… Continue reading Parable of the Sower

Parable of the Sower, with its pervasive violence and degradation of a futuristic world, reminds me of a movement in the 1990s called In-yer-face theatre. While Parable of the Sower is in fact a novel, it still contains similarities with this kind of drama. In-yer-face theatre is “the kind of theatre which is blatantly aggressive… Continue reading In-Yer-Face

What a marvelous idea Lauren Olamina had in inventing her own religion. After all, most church leaders swear by their “God” that only their church have the absolute TRUTH. But in order to get the benefits and blessings that the real God provide to this out of the ordinary church, people must be members of… Continue reading EARTHSEED: inventing her own religion

In this past week’s reading of Parable of the Sower we learned that Lauren’s younger brother, Keith, dies in a gruesome manner and neither she nor their dad cries. Lauren says she’s never seen her dad cry, and perhaps because she looks up to him so much, she doesn’t cry either. Keith is her brother… Continue reading I hardly noticed there weren’t tears in her eyes

I found Don DeLillo’s list for other possible titles of White Noise to be extremely interesting.  Although I do enjoy White Noise as a title for the book and I agree with DeLillo that it was the best choice, I thought there were several other possible titles that would have been a good fit as well.… Continue reading Possible Titles for White Noise

So I started off thinking about this blog post by thinking about how White Noise repeatedly challenged ideas of semantics. (Hint: boy was that a bad idea.) I started with the account of the plane-that-almost-crashed and was intending to continue through other examples later in the novel, but I ended up getting myself into a mess… Continue reading I’m very sorry for all the meta.

I know I spoke about this in class, but it’s poked at my mind quite a bit over the last few days. Jack’s obsession with his illusions, especially when it comes to Babette, strikes a chord with me. We have so much gender-loaded language in our society now, and even more in the 1980’s when… Continue reading Will The “Real Babette” Please Stand Up?

One thing that I thought was really interesting in Don Delillo’s “White Noise” is the fact that there is an entire university department dedicated to studying Adolf Hitler. This raises Hitler and his terror to an almost revered level- in fact an argument be made that he was DEFINITELY revered by Jack. There are multiple… Continue reading even though its 1:30 i would be ever so happy if you counted this for a grade

In the first few pages of White Noise, Jack and Murray head to the country. The men don’t linger in the romantic landscape of meadows, apple orchards, white fences and rolling fields. Conventional intentions of a pilgrimage – the wish for understanding and peace – is upset right away by the crowd of photographers and… Continue reading The Postmodern Sunset

I have titled my post as such partly because I think I am terribly clever, but mostly because I think the children in White Noise are rather ironic. Children in novels usually represent innocence and pure unadulterated knowledge, but none of the children in White Noise actually behave as children. It could be that the… Continue reading The ‘age of innocence’ in White Noise

As much as we’ve talked about the issue of death in White Noise in class, I can’t help but feel that there’s more to say. One passage that stood out in my mind after reading is in the middle of chapter 26 when Babette and Jack argue about who is more afraid of death. They… Continue reading “Not now, Death”