Radiation and Reactions

            While reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise, I was greatly struck by the reactions to disaster.  As members of the white middle or elite class, Jack and many of the other main characters felt surprised that a natural or unnatural disaster could not only happen in an area that was not impoverished, but could affect the area so greatly.  Jack displays a sense of privilege and self-entitlement, as he whole-heartedly believes that this should only have happened to the poor in exposed areas (112). 

            As my mom’s entire side of the family lives in New Orleans and was forced to evacuate to my home in Indiana, I felt a great deal of sadness while viewing the noise and seeing that those affected the most were those that were most financial dependent on our government.  Similarly, while I was in Japan last year, I was stranded in Tokyo in the face of the earthquake and tsunami.  Many of the citizens of Japan who were trapped within the confines of Tokyo were actually the service workers who did not have the means to stay in hotels or find shelter within the city.  It was devastating to walk through the lobby and see the these individuals sleeping on the floor desperately attempting to contact their families who had not heard from them.

            Although I was in trapped in Japan, it was only a day before I was able to find away home.  However, upon returning home, I was not welcomed but rather tested for radiation from the nuclear reactors.  I read Jack’s character and felt a direct connection to his experience and fears of death.  Once I approached the end of the novel, it was then that I lost all connection with Jack.  As the novel as a whole struggles with the death of individuality, Jack exerts his individuality through coping with his own (seemingly) imminent death.  It is through our own unique fears and approaches with death that we, like Jack, find ways in which we can cope and understand the afterlife, our final moments, our personal meaning, and what we have done for society.  It is through holding the power of the gun and another man’s life in his own hands that Jack finally pulls through and is able to understand his own fears and issues with death.