White Noise: Style 1 key example

It is common among postmodern novels to use protagonists as narrators to foreground the fears and desires that animate the character's consciousness. Jack has a literal, meritocratic, practical worldview on most matters but is hampered by an extreme fear of death and distrust of enemies and loved ones alike. These affect the style of narration, through constant repetition of the topics that Jack cannot stop thinking about, like his insuffiency as a Hitler scholar and his desire for medical treatment.

Also, the most striking metaphors and similes appear when Jack's emotions are at their strongest. In other words, DeLillo's style becomes more lyrical and poetic to reflect Jack's heightened state.  For one example, when he is slighted by a coworker in Chapter 17, Jack brings his family on a spending spree at the mall: "The more money I spent, the less important it seemed. I was bigger than these sums. These sums poured off my skin like so much rain." The sweeping, dramatic style here reflects Jack's own feelings on the situation, that the shopping will magically heal him of his ills. For another, when Jack visits Autumn Harvest Farms in Chapter 36, at the peak of his anxieties about his health in the wake of the Airborne Toxic Event, he describes a "bodily emission" he brings as a sample with reverent awe: "Here was a daub of the most solemn waste of all, certain to be looked upon by the technicians on duty with the mingled deference, awe and dread we have come to associate with exotic religions of the world." Here again the soaring, poetic style inflates to match Jack's emotions. While Jack's style as a first-person narrator is usually conversational and straightforward, the style becomes heightened to reflect Jack's heightened emotions.