The Female Body as a Vessel for Immortality in DeLillo’s “White Noise” and Nabokov’s “Lolita” Odessa Rontogiannis College

How does the male ego contend with incontestable mortality? In his novel “White Noise”, Don DeLillo depicts a suburbia plagued by eco-disaster. The narrative is underscored by fear of inevitable mortality, strengthened by a contemporary anxiety surrounding eco-sickness. Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” also explores the theme of mortality; the novel follows a paedophilic protagonist’s attempt to immortalise a young girl, Dolores Haze, by fabricating and preserving an idealised version of her. Both writers communicate the impulse of the male ego to objectify and possess the female body, trying to evade its own mortality. Both works feature: objectifying portrayals of the female body; an inextricable link between the female body and vitality; the female body as territory to be dominated and protected. Whilst DeLillo uses certain post-modernist techniques, such as waning of affect and underlining mass consumerism, to communicate the male perception of the female body, Nabokov favours modernist techniques, like art’s autonomy and focus on character interiority. Ultimately, both writers encourage readers to notice the existentially anxious underpinnings of the male desire to objectify and dominate.

In “White Noise”, DeLillo describes his...