Image Study Part Two

This video discusses images introduced in Parts Two and Three of White Noise and their meanings.

White Noise as a Dystopia

   Many readers mistakenly consider White Noise a dystopian novel. While it fits some of the characteristics, it does not qualify. A dystopia is generally defined as,

 "a futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control. Dystopias, through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, make a criticism about a current trend, societal norm, or political system (Dystopias)."

      In some ways, White Noise fits the description of a dystopia. The novel is considered post-modern so it is futuristic. However, it is set in the near future. No significant changes have occurred except the passage of time. White Noise is also a worst-case scenario by which DeLillo makes criticism of American society. The prevalence of technology, the dissolution of the American family, and consumerism are all issues he wishes to shed light on. These characteristics show that the novel is a satire and a social commentary. They do not prove that it is dystopian fiction.
     The term dystopia has evolved from the term "negative utopia." In order for a novel to be a true dystopia, an illusion of a perfect society must be present as well as an oppressive controlling force. No character in White Noise sees their world as perfect. The world they live in is present-day America with social changes. There is no political or technological control that does not exist in America today. No alteration of the power structure has occurred. Therefore, no attempted utopia exists.
     This novel serves many of the same purposes as a dystopia. Through it, DeLillo attempts to solve perceived social problems by raising awareness about what they could lead to. However, it cannot be classified with dystopias.

Works Cited

"Dystopias: Definition and Characteristics." Readwritethink.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. <http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson926/DefinitionCharacteristics.pdf>.

Illusion vs. Reality

     The tension between reality and artifice in Americans' lives is Delillo's main message in White Noise. The first demonstration of this is in the Most Photographed Barn in the World scene. Further instances occur in Jack's life when he attempts to impress those around him by artificial means.

     In Part Two: The Airborne Toxic Event, readers are introduced to an organization called SIMUVAC, standing for Simulated Evacuation. This organization is called in response to the Airborne Toxic Event and attempts to rescue people. Rather than viewing their years of simulations as practice for the authentic event, they see the event as preparation for simulations. The point of the exercise is not lifesaving, it is the appearance of lifesaving. This particular concept is reiterated when Murray pays a prostitute $25 to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her. The woman was not choking and did not need saving but Murray felt less helpless when he fooled himself into self-importance. 

     Dylar is a medicine which Babette takes and Jack attempts to take which relives its user of the perpetuating fear of death. Neither Jack nor Babette searches for a medicine or lifestyle that will prevent them from actually dying, they simply wish to be unaware of their predicament. This desire for an artificial escape from death carries into Jack's conversations with his son Heinrich's friend Orest. Orest wants to break the world record for longest amount of time spent in an enclosure with snakes. By purposefully exposing himself to this kind of danger, he defies death and welcomes it. Outwardly, Jack seems incredulous at the idea, repeatedly trying to convince him out of his plan. Inwardly, Jack is reminded of his own weakness and fear. Each is putting up a mask, Orest's of bravado and Jack's of concern, to hide their terror at the idea of mortality.

    While trying to discover the nature of Dylar, Jack enlists the help of Winnie. She suddenly becomes elusive and begins to run away from him when he looks for her. When questioned about it, she answers, "Isn't this what the twentieth century is all about? People go into hiding even when no one is looking for them." This statement seems to be a loose biblical allusion to Proverbs 28:1 which states: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." DeLillo was brought up in a Roman Catholic household but now states that religion has little influence on his life. His knowledge but disbelief in the Christian faith allows him to use this phrasing to highlight the illusion of modern trends' automatic importance.

     Throughout the novel, each of the characters deludes themselves and others constantly. Their worlds are so entangled in these lies and illusions that the truth is indistinguishable. The world that DeLillo creates is a reflection and magnification of American society. So many lives are consumed by the desire to appear superior that appearances to the rest of the world eclipse the importance of true value.

Hitler

     Adolf Hitler and the German persona are vital components to understanding the psyche of Jack Gladney. Jack's fundamental personality trait is an overwhelming fear of death. Until he is informed by SIMUVAC that he will die from Nyodene Derivative poisoning, Jack does not recognize his own mortality whatsoever.  He shields himself from death with his position as the head of Hitler Studies at the College-on-the-Hill.

     Murray's character is often philosophical. When he makes an observation, it is clear that DeLillo is speaking through the character. He observes that Jack may have a fascination with Hitler because he is "larger than death." The name Adolf Hitler is intimately connected with millions of deaths. The atrocities he committed and the lives he ended greatly outshadow his own single death. In this way, his reputation (though it is an infamous one) remained intact after his death and he has achieved immortality, in a sense. 

     Jack associates German culture as a whole with strength and immortality. He states that he named his son Heinrich because it was a "strong" name. By associating himself with the German language, he believes he will gain strength himself. However, he is unable to fulfill this desire because he only artificially connects himself to Germany. He pretends to study Hitler but is more interested in his persona than in factual details. He takes a few German language lessons but has no interest in really learning the language. Jack is unable to fulfill his need to feel "larger than death" because he is unable to achieve anything but surface-level association to the concept he believes will save him.

     Jack also strives to overthrow his crippling fear of death by murdering Willie Mink and stealing Dylar. Jack has begun to feel like his life was insignificant. He felt lifeless and spiritually dead while remaining physically alive. He took off on a reckless journey to (the conveniently named) Germantown. While he was normally very cautious, he drove unsafely. DeLillo states that Jack felt more alive than he ever had before. When he arrives, Willie has mentally collapsed due to the technological influences in his life. Jack shoots Willie twice before being shot in the wrist once. Jack relishes the pain and his feeling of proximity to death reengages his sympathy. He takes Willie to a hospital run by German nuns. In this sequence, the presence of a city named Germantown and German nuns connect the scene to Jack's feeling of immortality and strength. He gains confidence from the idea of killing another person, as if to balance out his own individual death. He says that the nurses' words are beautiful even though he can't understand them. 

     Jack, rather than coming to terms with his death through his experience, continues to rely on Hitler and artificiality. He, like the elderly of the town who are agitated when the grocery store moves its items, can't handle change of any time. The elderly are the closest to death so they most vehemently resist change of any time. Jack strives for success to overcome death and eventually becomes more comfortable with the concept. However, he continues to be terrified by the sunset, just as he is terrified of his impending death.

Rhetoric Study

Rhetorically, Part One of the book is the most striking. It is the embodiment of Jack's quote at the end of chapter 6, "All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots." Taking this to heart, Jack attempts to live a life without a plot. His actions are haphazard and do not have a final goal. DeLillo successfully represents this concept through his meandering style.
In the excerpt from Chapter 8, DeLillo discusses Denise, Murray, Heinrich, Babette, Wilder, and Steffie in fragmented detail. He skips from incredible detail on one character to a completely related detail about the activities of another. In discussion, none of the characters listen to one another so they skip from topic to topic without communicating.
In this passage, DeLillo relates technology to death several times. He states that the compactor machine made a sound of eerie feeling. He also connects the radio to unfounded advice. Throughout the passage, he emphasizes sounds. The chaos of children moving in and out of the kitchen, the clanging and humming of various appliances, and the constant, meaningless noise that makes up the background of lives are featured. This seemingly random style and extreme detail about technology and noises brings the reader closer to the idea that plots and technology make up the "white noise" of a technology-influenced world and will eventually lead to death.
Chapter 8:

"At home Denise placed a moist bag of garbage in the kitchen compactor. She started up the machine. The ram stroked downward with a dreadful wrenching sound, full of eerie feeling. Children walked in and out of the kitchen, water dripped in the sink, the washing machine heaved in the entranceway. Murray seemed engrossed in the incidental mesh. Whining metal, exploding bottles, plastic smashed flat. Denise listened carefully, making sure the mangling din contained the correct sonic elements, which meant the machine was operating properly.

"Heinrich said to someone on the phone, 'Animals commit incest all the time. So how unnatural can it be?'

"Babette came in from running, her outfit soaked through Murray walked across the kitchen to shake her hand. She fell into a chair, scanned the room for Wilder. I watched Denise make a mental comparison between her mother's running clothes and the wet bag she'd dumped in the compactor. I could see it in her eyes, a sardonic connection. It was these secondary levels of life, these extrasensory flashes and floating nuances of being, these pockets of rapport forming unexpectedly, that made me believe we were a magic act, adults and children together, sharing unaccountable things.

"'We have to boil our water,' Steffie said.

"'Why?'

"'It said on the radio.'

"'They're always saying boil your water,' Babette said. 'It's the new thing, like turn your wheel in the direction of the skid. Here comes Wilder now. I guess we can eat.'

"The small child moved in a swaying gait, great head wagging, and his mother made faces of delight, happy and outlandish masks, watching him approach.

"'Neutrinos go right through the earth,' Heinrich said into the telephone.

"'Yes, yes, yes,' said Babette." 

"Who Will Die First?"

The fear of death is prevalent in all characters throughout the novel.

Babette and Jack often ask one another the question, “Who will die first?” They both claim that they hope to die first so that they don’t have to live without the other. In Chapter 20, Jack’s internal monologue reveals that he was lying. Death and loneliness are two of his worst fears but he says that he would not hesitate in choosing to die last. Both Babette and Jack see their children as a route to escape death. The concept of reproducing so that one’s legacy may continue is common, as is the idea of retaining youth through close contact with children. This novel takes that one step further. Babette and Jack suffer under the delusion that, by some unwritten natural order, they cannot die while they have children dependent on them.

This offers insight into their desire to have as many children around as possible.

Technology and death are strongly connected in Chapter 18 when Bee’s (Jack’s daughter from a previous marriage) plane nearly crashes. The engine shuts down and the plane begins to fall out of the sky. The panic and futility of efforts to survive foreshadow the consequences of reliance on technology. Before it hits the ground, the engine returns to power and flight staff pretend that they had maintained professionalism and order. After this traumatic experience, passengers were unsure about their own emotions. They hover around one man as he tells the story, seeming to draw certainty about the sequence of events from him. The inability of these characters to come to terms with the possibility of their mortality is a social commentary by Delillo about delusions that Americans subscribe to. Jack explicitly connects technology, and the so-called "white noise" that emanates from it, with death when he says,

“What if death is nothing but sound?”“Electrical noise.”“You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful.”“Uniform, white.”

Themes from American Literature

The American Dream and Heroes
A major theme in Don Delillo’s writing on a whole is the effects of technology on the American identity. This novel most specifically explores the idea of the fading of the real world and its replacement with artifices and façades. The American Dream in the roots of American literature represented a world of unbridled possibilities and potential that could be unlocked by one qualification, hard work. Technology has fundamentally changed that system. Manual labor and street smarts are no longer ingredients for success. Anyone with an intimate knowledge of computers can be a millionaire but long-toiling Americans receive almost no reward for their work. In the novel, Jack is the embodiment of the anti-American dream. He has been married four times and has children from various marriages. His family is dysfunctional and nowhere near the ideal American image. Jack is also a professor in Hitler studies. By today’s standards, Hitler studies are not a traditional American value. He does not work exceptionally hard and has little merit in any way. He is a generally unhappy man. By embodying the opposite of the American Dream, Jack becomes an anti-hero. Like Willy Loman in The Death of a Salesman, Jack is anything but a traditional American hero. These characters show a shift in American literature and a shift in the American social climate. Both Miller and Delillo recognize that the American dream is crumbling (due to economic depression or the undue influence of technology).

The Significance of Names

College-on-the-Hill
America was founded by the Puritans as a so-called “city on a hill.” Matthew 5:14 says “You are the light of the world, a city on a hill cannot be hidden.”This phrase has been used historically as rationalization for American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, the American dream, and the “white man’s burden.” These grand concepts define the idealized nation that the Puritans set out to form. The school that Jack is a professor (in Hitler studies) at is entitled the College-On-The-Hill. The concept of being prominent in the public eye and an example to all others is a familiar one. In this case, however, the college has seemingly meaningless departments focusing on Pop Culture and  Hitler studies. In the first chapter, Delillo describes students returning from vacation as a procession of sameness. Each station wagon is exactly the same as the one behind it. The anonymity and monotony of life in a supposed example for the world demonstrates Delillo’s belief that American exceptionalism is impractical and ridiculous in modern society.

Heinrich
Jack’s greatest desire is to appear knowledgeable and authoritative to his colleagues. In Chapter 14, Denise questions Jack as to how he decided on his son, Heinrich’s, name. He answers, “I thought it had an authority that might cling to him. I thought it was forceful and impressive and I still do. I wanted to shield him, make him unafraid. (63)” Jack demonstrates even in the naming of his son his need to impress and gain an advantage over his competition.

Blacksmith
Blacksmiths are generally seen as uneducated, simple, and hard-working. According to this definition, they are connected to the foundations of American society. Naming the town in which Jack and his family reside Blacksmith creates a feel of small-town simplicity. Murray portrays the town positively in relation to the city, saying it is less corrupted by sexual influence. However, the town is overrun by a sense of monotony. The dual nature of safety and security is demonstrated.

Image Study Part One: The Most Photographed Barn in America and Appearances

When you take a picture of a tourist attraction, what are you really photographing?

One of the most discussed scenes from the novel is a short passage at the end of the third chapter. In the scene, Murray and Jack drive out into the country to see a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. They see multiple signs for the attraction and a large crowd is gathered near it, taking photos. After a long silence, Murray has an unusual revelation. He states that “No one sees the barn. (12)” What he means by this cryptic phrase is that the tourists are not photographing the barn because it is especially beautiful, antique, or exceptional in any way. They are photographing it for the sole reason that others have photographed it. He states that the tourism is a religious experience, an aura that once inside, one cannot escape. The book is, as a whole, a collection of anecdotes which are related in meaning but do not follow a logical plot path. This fact makes it clear that Delillo did not include such a striking passage by accident.

The passage is directly preceded by Murray’s description of his desire to study Elvis in the way that Jack has studied Hitler. Murray is able to recognize the irony of the tourists photographing the barn but he is not able to recognize the same concept in his own life. The entirety of Elvis’ career was based on a persona. Many people enjoyed his music but simply being a talented musician does not make an artist a phenomenon. The fascination Elvis held for the American population parallels the obsession with photographing the barn. Once a person is aware of the stigma of Elvis, there is no way to escape the aura of his fame.

Another parallel to the barn within the novel is Jack’s job as a professor at the College-on-the-hill. At the school, department heads wear academic robes. As Jack puts it, they are not “sweeping full-length affairs but sleeveless tunics puckered at the shoulders. (9)” These robes represent Jack’s career and personality. He desires the appearance of grandeur but doesn’t desire the actual responsibility. He is the head of Hitler Studies and the originator of the topic but he does not know German. In Chapter 8, he begins taking German lessons. He does not want to learn the language to do better perform his job, he wants to avoid embarrassment in front of his colleagues.

The importance of perception over reality becomes a common theme as the plot progresses. Delillo strives to reveal the artificiality of Americans in the present era and how consumerism and appearances have overtaken the value of the truth.

Character Study- Part One

Jack Gladney is the department head of Hitler Studies at the College-on-the-Hill. He lives a somewhat dysfunctional life with his wife Babette and four of their children from previous marriages. A defining characteristic of Jack is his overwhelming fear of death. He has become obsessed to the point that he reads obituaries and counts off how many years he has left. He cannot come to terms with his own mortality. A second defining characteristic of Jack is the importance of appearances to him. He wants to appear scholarly and knowledgeable to his colleagues so he hides behind his academic robes and persona to avoid a real test of his skill.

Babette is described as an utterly plain woman. She is a physical representation of the average. Her work consists of volunteering by teaching adult education classes and reading tabloids to a blind man. Her physical condition is less than exemplary; she exercises often but lacks the self discipline to lose weight. She is incredibly forgetful. However, Jack considers her superior to his other wives because she is so unexceptional. He considers her small successes miracles and supports her unconditionally.

Denise is Babette’s daughter and the second oldest child in the house. She is precocious and intelligent but disrespectful to her parents and has no problem bossing them around.

Steffie is Jack’s daughter and the second youngest child in the house. She is incredibly sensitive and wears various items of clothing as shields from fear.

Wilder is the youngest child in the family. He is Babette’s son and doesn’t say a word throughout the novel. He is most significant for his crying episodes and for his influence on Jack. He represents an innocence and ignorance of death that Jack is jealous of and Babette wishes to maintain for as long as possible.

Heinrich is Jack’s son and the oldest child in the house. He is logical and disattached to the family. He represents his father’s hope that Hitler studies will provide him a strong posterity and freedom from death.

Murray is a colleague of Jack’s and his only mentioned friend. He wants to start a department surrounding Elvis because his focus is on popular culture. He is constantly making observations and stating opinions about American culture. He becomes a source of wisdom for Jack and a source of insight into Delillo’s thinking for readers.