“Distortion”, “Interference” and “Resonance”: On Consumer Society’s Metaphors of Sounds in White Noise

Abstract Book of the 11th International Conference on Research in Social Sciences

Year: 2026

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“Distortion”, “Interference” and “Resonance”: On Consumer Society’s Metaphors of Sounds in White Noise

Dr. Zhaonian Zhu

ABSTRACT:

In White Noise, Don DeLillo uses metaphors of sounds to outline the highly consumerist life of contemporary people. Based on the contradictions carried by “white noise”, this essay uses the acoustic concepts of distortion, interference and resonance to analyze the misleading of social culture and individual cognition by the trend of symbolic consumption in the novel, the interplay between characters’ fetishization of signs and their fear of death, and the dynamic between the clamor of consumer society and individual subjectivity. These metaphors serve as a critique of the influence of popular culture, media, and technological, while also reveal humanity’s active resistance against existential dread and the void of meaning. In the connection between the theory of consumer society and the analysis of metaphors of sounds, DeLillo’s dialectical view of contemporary human condition is further demonstrated.

Keywords: Don Delillo; White Noise; Consumer Society; Metaphor Of Sound