White Noise by Don DeLillo

White Noise

Don DeLillo

Published: 1985

American Post Modern

The Well-Educated Mind Novels

⭐⭐⭐

Part of the TWEM reading challenge involves answering questions.  I have chosen one question from each stage of reading to answer.

Grammar Stage: What is the most important event in which the main character changes? 

Jack, a middle-aged man afraid of dying, thinks he can eliminate his fear by controlling and overpowering death – that is, by killing someone.  (It sounds heavy, but the novel is a humorous satire).  Leading up to the plan to kill, the most important event happens: his plot backfires, literally.

Logic Stage: What does the main character want, and what does he do to get it? 

Jack wants to eliminate his fear of death because it is stifling his desire to live. He learns that Babette, his wife, also has a fear of death and is secretly taking a tablet (medicine) – not on the market - to remove the fear from her mind, as it claims to do. 

Jack wants to see if the tablet will work for him, but Babette refuses to tell him how to get it.  He plots to seek out the distributor and kill him (for a personal reason), but only after obtaining the tablets; this is where it backfires. Instead of carrying out his plan on a higher conscious level, he succumbs to reality. Because of this complication, Jack hypothetically accepts that at some point he is going to die; he just does not want to know when (or how).  

Instead, Jack finds ways to cope: he avoids his doctor whose only purpose is to probe and inform him on "how his death is progressing."  Jack no longer wants to know.

Another comfort is his youngest son, Wilder, who gives him joy because he is completely ignorant of danger. Wilder can truly live because he has no concept of death, and Jack can experience peace through him.

Rhetoric Stage: What is the author trying to tell us?  Do you agree?

DeLillo is telling us we are losing our humanness because we are inundated with intrusive product advertisement, obsessive consumerism, useless technology, unnecessary health and environmental practices, false predictions, even man-made religions that purport to change us, save us, protect us, make us better, healthier, and definitely happier. 

Instead, we feel, think, and behave like robots, emotionless, disconnected, unenlightened, and unable to communicate within the natural human systems of family and community.  I like what Jack’s son, Heinrich, says to him: 

We think we’re so great and modern…Here it is practically the twenty-first century and you’ve read hundreds of books and magazines and seen a hundred TV shows about science and medicine.  Could you tell [a Stone Ager] one little crucial thing that might save a million and a half lives?...But nobody actually knows anything.

Throughout the novel, DeLillo slips words inside of dialogue or moments of contemplation that appear out of place, almost like a humming background noise, in order to simulate what the characters feel like: distracted and over stimulated.

What does that have to do with a fear of death? Well, there is this part when Jack reveals his fear to a colleague.  She says, 

I think it’s a mistake to lose one’s sense of death, even one’s fear of death.  Isn’t death the boundary we need?  Doesn’t it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition?  You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.  

Jack reluctantly understands.

But people cannot know their sense of death or fear of it if they have a distorted view of life, which is because they are constantly bombarded with distractions, fear, insecurity, confusion, and lies about life, preventing a healthy connection to reality and truth. 

In the story, everyone has his own way of dealing with death.  Some face it head on, taunt it, or try to beat it; others embrace it.  Jack is in the process of determining how to deal with his: coping, for now. 

Forget the medicine in that tablet.  There is no medicine, obviously.

...says his wise colleague.

Author's argument recap

(This is only my opinion.)  Man is losing his humanness - his ability to be well-grounded, in touch with reality - because he is inundated with FALSE advertisements, products, ideas, premonitions, opinions, technologies, etc. to make himself a better human being, when instead he has become more uninformed, dull, fearful, and robotic.  

When the main character, Jack, and his wife, Babette, admit they have a fear of death, they believe a little pill has the power to erase that fear because its distributor says it will.  But it doesn't.  Instead, the couple is left to naturally cope with their own insecurities.  (We're not Brave New World, yet).

So, do I agree?  

I think DeLillo makes a great argument.  I can see evidence that society is becoming brain dead with overstimulation of information, technology, and consumerism, and we are not any smarter or wiser, happier or more peaceful, or capable of healthy communication. We put faith in technology, medicine, and marketing to educate us, inform us, make us live longer, healthy, happy lives; yet, we are unsophisticated, more dependent on outward sources, unable to cope, still miserable, and still immortal.  Let me rephrase: NOT everyone suffers these ills, but these issues still exist and are not going away. They are still with us, and spreading.

The most important point

Jack's colleague made an important point when she told Jack that knowledge and fear of death are essential to feeling the fullness of life.  (She doesn't say that, per se, but I am presenting what she says in another way.) People need to have finality of life in order to appreciate life; otherwise, if they never recognize the end, what is there to be grateful for?  

Jack copes - at least, that is what I understand because there is no real determinant.  He seems to find peace in watching his children sleep or being with his three-year old, who is free from the burden of the knowledge of death. He lives on the edge because he is not afraid of danger or death.  He LIVES, and Jack lives through him.

What I do not agree with

Now, I do not agree that it is healthy to live through others, but Jack is not exactly well grounded to begin with.  He is not a strong character, within the novel.  He is married numerous times and has zero authority with his children and stepchildren; in fact, they make him appear foolish.  He is a feeble man who teaches Hitler studies at the local college.  Even that is a cover-up.   

I wrote in my notes that Jack “is an idiot” because he has no outward reaction to Babette’s infidelity.  Instead, Babette scolds him for wanting to know the individual whom she exchanged sexual favors with for the pill that is supposed to erase her fears.  She says, 

Ask yourself what it is you want more, to ease your ancient fear or to revenge your childish dopey injured male pride.  

That was totally unwarranted; and, yet, he did not defend himself.

A personal part

To conclude, I felt terrible for Jack and his wife because I understood their fear of death.  I endured a fear of death, too, in my youth, when I lost several peers in their late teens, and I did not understand it.  It freaked me out to know that someone my age could die.  I was so afraid, I remember, but I had no answers; I just accepted it as a really bad end.  

Today, as a Christian, I have an understanding of death, and I know what happens to us when we die.  I am assured of life after death, and I am content. But I felt frustrated for Jack and Babette because they were lost, so lost that they foolishly put their faith into anything offered to eradicate their fear, as if that would be sufficient.  Neither one of them wanted to know the Truth; they just wanted to deaden or mask the fear.  And all I could think about was if they knew the Truth, they would not have to fear.  They wouldn't need magic pills or pathetic tabloids or to seek peace through their wild three-year old, living on the edge.  

By the end of the novel, I thought Jack was going to actually meet someone who would tell him the Truth.  He entered a Catholic hospital, for goodness sake! He started to probe life and death answers from a nun who worked there.  But, no! She was an unbelieving nun!  Who ever heard of an unbelieving nun?  She was a dead end, a lost opportunity for the main character to finally receive the Good News about his life so that he would never have to be afraid of dying again. The irony of it all.  I guess that is why it is a comical satire.  Nonetheless, it was a disappointing conclusion.

Add it to my "reread someday" pile

However, while I think the novel has some flaws, and the writing is not complex, I found it humorous and entertaining and may be the first post-modern novel that I had actually looked forward to reading. I may even add it to my "reread someday" pile.