2. One of the major themes of White Noise is "information." Describe how DeLillo portrays individuals responding to life in an age of disorientingly plentiful information. What, for instance, is the symbolism of Jack's comment in chapter 7 that he "decided on the twentieth century," as if an individual could freely choose any time period in which to live? And how does the fact that this choice (and others like it) exists contribute to the confusion that intrudes upon Jack and Babette's attempts to make love, or produces Jack's sense later in the chapter that the "past possessed some quality of light we no longer experience"? Are families, as Jack suggests, the "cradle of the world's misinformation," and if so, what implications might be drawn from that statement regarding towns, nations, and other forms of community founded upon the model of family?
3. Chapters 9 and 17 of White Noise feature scenes in which the Gladney family goes shopping--first in a supermarket, and second in a shopping mall. Each scene suggests strongly that retail spaces such as malls and stores are more than just places to buy things, and that they also function as locations for psychological and perhaps even spiritual rejuvenation. What does DeLillo (and characters such as Murray Jay Siskind and Jack Gladney) seem to be suggesting about why people really go shopping? Why, for instance, does the encounter in which Jack Gladney is told by a colleague that he looks "aging, indistinct" without his dark glasses and gown "put [him] in the mood to shop"? And why, after shopping, does the family go "to [their] respective rooms, wishing to be alone"?