The Primitive Mind in the Airplane Disaster in Don Delillo’s White Noise

Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise has attained the status of a cultural icon for its acute insight into the traumatic impact of modern technology on the fragile edifice of human psychology and sense of well-being. Despite the technological advances, the human being remains a primitive savage hiding behind the façade of civilized manners, and it only takes very little for the savage to come out crying bloody murder and make sacrificial offerings to pagan gods to avoid death at all cost. DeLillo’s genius resides in unmasking the flimsy pretenses at civilization in the episode with the falling plane and exposing the savages, to which otherwise civilized passengers, are reduced to when facing the prospect of imminent death.