a 'sight'...not a 'thing'." Because as Murray explains "we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures," the barn is a cultural reality which has what Delillo calls an "aura." This aura, says Murray, prevents us from even speculating about what the "original" barn might have really been like because "We can't get outside the aura," and every photograph taken by the tourists only "reinforces the aura" of the barn. According to Frank Lentricchia, this loss of the referent, the dissolving of the object into its representations, lends the passage the status of a "primal scene," but one which is for Murray an occasion for celebration because it is a "technological transcendence" and "We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now." Childhood DeLillo also portrays the children as being smarter and more mature than the adults in White Noise. In a 1985 book review of the novel by Jayne Anne Phillips from The New York Times, Phillips says "Children, in the America of White Noise, are in general, more competent, more watchful, more in sync than their parents." These children have the composure normally expected of an adult, yet the parents have a constant sense of self-doubt that makes them appear immature and paranoid. A scholar from University of Washington, Tom Leclaire, adds to the argument by saying that children are the center of knowledge: "Gladney's children are making his family a center of learning." However, Joshua Little, of Georgia State University, provides a different point of view that "the possibility of transcendence through the innocence of children is hinted at in the novel." According to Little, in the context of the turn of the century, knowledge is connected to having a higher social standing. Adina Baya, a specialist in media communication, supports this idea as she points out that children during the 1980s had greater access to mass media and marketing than before. Religion DeLillo interprets religion in White Noise unconventionally, most notably drawing comparisons between Jack's local supermarket and a religious institution on several occasions. Critic Karen Weekes argues that religion in White Noise has "lost its quality" and that it is a "devaluation" of traditional belief in a superhuman power. According to critic Tim Engles, DeLillo portrays protagonist Jack Gladney as "formulating his own prayers and seeking no solace from higher authority." In addition, in the places the reader would expect to see religion, it