Food and eating in DeLillo’s White Noise

In Don DeLillo’s novel White noise food and eating are both mentioned a number of times. DeLillo is using the references to food and eating to make a point about American culture. Let’s take a look and see if we can figure out what is going on:

The first time food is mentioned, is in Jack Gladney’s opening monologue about the student’s yearly arrival to the College-on-the-Hill. He mentions it among the possessions they come with, “the junk food still in shopping bags—onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut crème patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints.” (DeLillo 3). Waffelos and Kaboom are popular breakfast cereals from the late 70’s early 80’s and Mystic Mints are chocolate covered mint cookies popular in the 70’s. A few things about this passage are notable: it is all processed junk foods, many artificial reorientations of actual food. For instance nacho thins are presumably a chip like a Dorito engineered to taste like a nacho without having to eat actual nachos. By using these particular foods as details, the novel shows the fakeness and processed food that has become normal to consume even to the station wagon people who are certainly not of lower economic status. The fact that they are still in shopping bags shows the consuming nature. There are also numerous times Jack mentions going down the “generic food aisle” on the visits to the supermarket.

Eating is also a topic Jack’s narrations mentions a few times in an interesting light. At the beginning of chapter 4, jack says, “When times are bad, people feel compelled to overeat. Blacksmith is full of obese adults and children…” ( Delillo 14). He is commenting on the people’s use of food as a sedative or to calm them in times of distress. It shows their dependence on the food. Many other examples include the family eating at meal times. In chapter 2 they eat lunch and Jack observes, “We entered a period of chaos and noise. We milled about, bickered a little, and dropped utensils. Finally we were all satisfied with what we’d been able to snatch from the cupboards and refrigerator or swipe from each other. (De Lillo 7). This description of the family making lunch as a chaotic and noisy mess with them moving about dropping things and arguing shows I guess the even that food is in their lives. His description of the food also shows the reader things about the text’s ideas of how people in the novel use food, “we began quietly plastering mustard or mayonnaise on our brightly colored food” and “open cartons, crumpled tinfoil, shiny bags of potato chips, bowls of pasty substances covered with plastic wrap, flip-top rings and twist ties, individually wrapped slices of orange cheese” (Delillo 7). This description of the food emphasizes its fakeness with all the bright colors and artificial materials. By commenting on the foods appealing shiny packages and plastics shows the artificialness of it too, by it’s prepackaged containers. Through these multiple example, we can see that the food’s atificiality is showcased. Also the people eat it to try and gain some sort of comfort or satisfaction and are enticed by it’s shiny packaging and promising names.