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Abstract
Anxiety is a human condition which prevails common in many people. Anxieties can be differentiated into ‘ Primal anxiety’, ‘ Ontological anxiety’, ‘ Reality anxiety’, Psychological anxiety’, ‘Social anxiety’, and so on. The real fact is all these anxieties are in some way existential.Paul Tillich, a Christian existentialist says that according to him anxiety can be of three forms: Anxiety of Death, Anxiety of meaninglessness and Anxiety of Condemnation. Paul Tillich declares, “The Anxiety of death is the permanent horizon within which the anxiety of fate is at work”. In the modern world anything that follows negativity triggers intense anxiety. A strong sense of psychological isolation also leads to anxiety. Incidents of guilt, fear, absurdity, alienation also lead to anxiety of death. Don DeLillo himself in an interview to William Goldstein in Publishers Weekly (August 19, 1988) explained anxiety as being “about danger, modern danger”. The main characters in Don DeLillo novels face some of the causes for anxieties such as the necessity of choice, terrorism, technological and scientific advancement, lack of freedom, fear of death, dissatisfaction in life, boredom and loneliness. This paper examines Don DeLillo’s White Noise based on the concept Anxiety of Death.