Jack vs. Death, Manliness, and Relevancy

When we first began discussing White Noise there were statements being thrown about suggesting that in a post modern society we've exhausted all means of adding new, original elements to our culture. In this day and age, almost everything is derived from the past. During our discussion today we were asked to think about what other ways "death" can be looked at in White Noise. Perhaps Jack Gladney believes death is synonymous with irrelevancy. I think Jack believes that, in Blacksmith, one becomes irrelevant when they lack "manliness." J.A.K Gladney, the white male elitist, is a means of security. One of J.A.K's most powerful weapons against unoriginality is his career. As we all know, he's the head of the Hitler Studies department at a university. But what's most unique about his career is his attempt at humanizing one of the most despised men in history: "...where he'd spent summers with his cousins, riding in ox carts and making kites" (72). Although being an intellectual doesn't quite match up with the typical rough, rugged male, it does assert some sort power. When Jack receives the gun from Vernon he treats it as a medal or award declaring his manliness. But what's unmanly is how Jack treats the weapon as an obsession - "The next day I started carrying the Zumwalt automatic to school. It was in the flap pocket of my jacket when I lectured...How stupid these people were, coming into my office unarmed...Late one day I took the gun out of my desk and examined it carefully" (283). The typical "man" is impulsive. A "man" would have the gun in a desk drawer, or a safe, ready to use it when necessary. Jack isn't a man, although he's desperately trying to be. He carries the gun around like it's his dark glasses.

I've been debating whether or not Jack has changed by the end of the novel and I've decided he has. Here's why. The white noise that haunts Jack could mean both death and irrelevancy, since they may be one in the same. Notice that Jack never joins the "we" in the supermarket until the very last page of the novel. Perhaps after the shooting, when he was at his peak of white male elitism, Jack experienced a revelation that reminded him of an element of human nature more biological than man's homicidal rage. He saves Mink out of a natural unity among men. I think this is why Jack joins the "we" at the end of the novel. Rather then looking for ways to escape death, I think he gives into the inevitability of death by the end of the novel. I saw the supermarket as a sort of purgatory after reading the line, "And this is where we wait together, regardless of age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods" (310). However, in this "purgatory," it's not the dead waiting for heaven, but the living waiting for death.