Prewriting and “White Noise” by DeLillo

There are Prewriting and Question part. You can pick one of the questions below in part 2 and answer it. Please clearly label you write part 1 or 2. You don’t need to write my name, date or something… you can just start to write about part 1 and part 2. Thank you 

Part 1. Prewriting.
A profound change in culture since the late twentieth century is the proliferation of
different products and advertisements through television and new media. We see in the news the importance of consumers for keeping the economy growing, and we are constantly targeted as consumers, as marketers try to get us to buy their products. A question is, does consumerism distract us from fundamental and important aspects of life? To what extent has consumerism become foundational to our lives, in that we help to create our identities through the things that we buy?

A second question that arises in the reading is that of the role of “experts.” While in the nineteenth century, popular magazines carried articles on everything from literature to thermodynamics, knowledge has become much more specialized today. Perhaps the passivity of many of our daily activities also contributes to a reliance on “experts” to tell us what is wrong and what to do to solve the problem. On the one hand, we receive so much information that sometimes we must rely on shortcuts, the evaluation and advice of “experts.” But to what extent does this become a danger, when experts are sometimes incorrect, or even mislead us? Once again, we think about the recent housing bubble or Hurricane Katrina. Why didn’t experts do something about these expected crises before it was too late? And to what extent does our reliance on experts, rather than thinking, seeing, and acting for ourselves, make us vulnerable to these bad outcomes?

Write your reflections on these issues about the culture of consumerism and of experts.

Part 2. Pick one of questions below and then answer it.
Question 1: “Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. This simple truth is hard to fathom. But once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die and then go on to experience uterine rebirth or Judeo-Christain afterlife or out –of-body experience or a trip on a UFO. . . Here we don’t die, we shop. . .Supermarkets this large and clean and modern are a revelation to me. I spent my life in small steamy delicatessens. . . In cities no one notices specific dying. Dying is a quality of the air.” (38)
Why does it show about us that, according to Murray, we don’t die, but rather we shop? What is the contrast Murray is drawing between the large clean supermarkets of the suburbs and the steamy delicatessens of the city, and how does this relate to dying?

Question 2: What do you think of Murray’s preference for generic labels? Is this kind of packaging, “IRREGULAR PEANUTS” on a white wrapper, a kind of advertisement in itself? (18)

Question 3: Why might it be unnerving to be approaching an age which loses its consumer identity? (50)

Question 4. What might Babette’s forgetfulness represent? (52)

Question 5: After the death of his mother, what solace did the German teacher Howard Dunlop find in learning meteorology? (55). Why was this appealing to other people—“factory workers, housewives, merchants, members of the police and the fire” (56) who took classes in meteorology?

Question 6: How might it be significant that the Treadwell’s were lost in the mall? (59)

Question 7: Why do we become obsessed with “the incessant bombardment of
information” of natural disasters around the world (66)?

Question 8: Why does Jack gain an “endless well-being” from his shopping spree at the mall? (83-84)

Question 9: Why do the people on the plane that nearly crashed gathered to hear the man’s story about their experience with no additions or clarifications of their own? (92)

Section II: The Airborne Toxic Event (108)

Question 10: How does the family react to the alert about the chemical cloud? What does this say about them? Why does Heinrich become uncharacteristically animated in talking about the disaster? Why are Jack and Babette so convinced “nothing is going to happen” (114)?

Question 11: How do the authorities appear to handle the chemical disaster? What is the source of the chemical? Why does the description of the cloud change from a “feathery plume” (111) to a “black billowing cloud” (113) to an “airborne toxic event” (117)?

Question 12:What may be the significance of deja-vu as one of the symptoms? (116)

Question 13. On page 126, considering the symptoms the children have of Nyodene
exposure, Jack wonders, “which was worse, the real condition or the self-created one, and did it matter?”Which do you think is worse and why?

Question 14: Why was section one entitled “Waves and Radiation?”