Airborne Toxicity in Don DeLillo’s White Noise

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the world came to realize the significant relationship between air and human health. This pandemic, which changed the course of many lives, demonstrated how air serves as a transmitter of viruses. However, this quality of air is not new, with air acting as a significant tool in transmitting diseases, pollution, and even death. It is crucial to understand that airborne diseases include but are not limited to epidemics or pandemics such as the black death, influenza, or COVID-19. Since the Chernobyl disaster, it is perceived that the previously feared disasters were replaced by new and human-made hazards such as toxicity and radioactivity. Environmental disasters such as the Bhopal disaster, Donora Smog, and the Chernobyl disaster emphasize the impact of toxic chemicals on humans and more-than-human lives. These disasters show that toxic substances that threaten the lives of all living things imperceptibly seep into the soil, water, and air, causing harm to ecosystems, and entering into human and more-than-human bodies. Exposure to toxicity and radioactivity can happen in the blink of an eye, transmitted through the air we breathe. Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise presents a significant example of toxicity through its striking portrayal of an airborne toxic event. This event, the appearance of a cloud of the fictional chemical Nyodene D., presents an environmental crisis through which relationships between air and environments can be explored. Similar to the issues and reflections experienced after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the characters in White Noise experience chaos, uncertainty, and fear following the abrupt occurrence of an airborne toxic event.

Keywords

• ecocriticism
• toxic discourse
• airborne toxic event
• risk society
• trans-corporeality