The Aura of Death

Along with the rampant consumption in White Noise comes an aura around everything. This concept begins with the “most photographed barn in America” (12). The awe inspired by this barn stems from the aura that has been constructed around it. With designated viewing and photographing areas, “postcards and slides-pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot,” every new sign, each added “photograph reinforces the aura” (12). The issues posed by this manufactured aura, this layer of mystery and white noise, are uttered in the questions that conclude this passage; “What was the barn like before it was photographed,” “how was it different from other barns,” etc (13). The answer to all these questions is unattainable. Because we are so much a “part of the aura,” “We can’t get outside” it (13). As if it were some new product, people consume the auras created around things as silly as barns. Like the barn, death, and “everything” in general, is “concealed in symbolism, hidden by veils of mystery and layers of cultural material,” layers which we are increasingly unable to peel away, meaning, we begin to confuse the aura of things with the reality of them (37). Like those who came to see the barn, we consume this aura around death as well, losing what Murray calls the “simple truth,” that death is merely the “end of attachment to things” (38). Jack is does not see this simple truth, he is too wrapped up in the aura around death to “stop denying death” (38). If he stopped denying its simplicity, he could proceed “calmly to die,” “with clear vision,” and “without awe or terror” (38). Jack cannot let go of an attachment to things, although much of the concluding chapters feature accounts of Jack throwing out random things around the home, he still clings to the protective devices we have talked so much about. Readers don’t hear of Jack throwing out the black robes, or glasses, we don’t see him renounce his alias JAK Gladney, he continues watching his children sleep. Most importantly, feeling desperate and consulting Murray after all of these devices ultimately can’t get the job done, he ends up turning to one last thing for protection, the Zumwalt. Thinking of it as the ultimate control over death, Jack demonstrated that he cannot simply cease his attachment to things, specifically those things, or even rituals, onto which he has attached a protective aura. The means of his escaping fear of death are the reasons why he ultimately cannot.