According to Raymond Williams, “In a class society, all beliefs are based on the class position and belief systems of all classes…” (Rice and Waugh 122). His work entitled Marxism and Literature exposes the conflict between social classes to connect the political ideals of Marxism to the implicit comments made through the text of a novel. “For the practical connections,” he asserts, “between ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’ and the ‘production of real life’ are all located in this material social process of meaning itself” (133). . Williams asserts that a Marxist approach to literature introduces cross-cultural universality, thereby adding timeless value to the text by linking creative and artistic processes to the resulting material products. Like Williams, Don DeLillo draws attention to the economic and material relationships behind universal abstractions such as aesthetics, love, and death. DeLillo's White Noise brings to the forefront of the story's plot the continuing disparity in the lifestyles of modern capitalist societies between active consumerists and those who cannot afford it. DeLillo's setting uses a man-made disaster that upended life in the small suburban town of Blacksmith to shed light on the class conflict between the middle class (bourgeoisie) and the working poor (proletariat). After a tank car is punctured, a menacing cloud begins to hang over Jack Gladney and his family. It is no longer a plume of feathers or a billowing black cloud, but the airborne toxic event – ​​an event from which, even after its conclusion, Jack cannot escape the prophecy of his impending death. Through a Marxist reading of the characterization of Jack Gladney, a middle-aged suburban college professor, it is clear that the primordial obsession with death functions like middle of paper...conduits are made to serve solutions to the public's looming problems, but instead perpetuate fears of their imminent death. . What makes this fear exclusively bourgeois is that, according to Williams, only this class has the time to think about its "means of subsistence." Work Cited Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 2nd ed.Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. Print.DeLillo, Don. White noise. New York: Penguin Group, 1986. Print “Marxist Literary Criticism.” » Online publication, YouTube. November 4, 2008. the web. December 1, 2011. Rice, Philip. and Patricia Waugh, ed. Modern literary theory. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.Sengupta, Somini. “25 years later, toxic sludge torments Bhopal.” nytimes.com. New YorkTimes, July 7, 2008. web. December 13 2011.