Expectations vs. Reality

Throughout our discussion of White Noise, we spent a lot of time talking about Jack’s deep seeded desire to be the perfect representation of white normative masculinity. But we did not spend a lot of time talking about where that desire came from, and I think this could point to another meaning of the title of the novel: The media is constantly showing everyone what “normal” looks like. Every race and gender is represented on TV and in the movies in some generalized way or another, but white men have most typically been portrayed as normative. Their masculinity and their whiteness are depicted as the norm. This “white noise” is incessant and inescapable for Jack.

As a result, those are his expectations for himself. He expects himself to be strong, powerful, assertive, and the head of a perfect nuclear family. In actuality though, no matter how “masculine” he is, death is inevitable and other people’s actions are entirely out of his control. For example, he sees his marriage to Babette as the perfect relationship because of the way she makes him “feel sweetly rewarded” (5). When she has an affair, he realizes how far outside of his control she really is. This certain lack of agency is evident in nearly every aspect of his life, and seems to contribute to his fear of death – he can’t do anything to stop it.

This makes it easier for me to understand the motivations behind Jack’s “protective strategies”. His Hitler obsession especially makes sense: Hitler not only controlled the people around him, but he seemed to have complete control of his own life – and his death! By living his life in the footsteps of someone he sees as having complete agency, Jack believes he can bridge the gap between expectations in reality.

It seems to me that the disparity between expectations and reality is something that everyone can relate to. You have this idealized image in your head about the way something (your life) should go, and it becomes really hard to swallow when things do not turn out the way you imagined. Though DeLillo does not necessarily speak directly to this, the sentiment is certainly there. And it’s an emotion that everyone can understand on some level or another.

Delillo and education

The first aspect of Delillo's novel that caught my attention was the representations of education and higher learning that seemed to fall on the wayside as the novel progressed. Though attention to J.A.K. as a professor of Hitler was largely emphasized and made prominent as the novel's themes unraveled, his role as an educator became less important, as interactions with his students, minimal from the start, were completely ignored. It seemed like the author held Jack's career as of lesser import than his professionalism in Hitler, which purposefully trivialized higher education as represented in the novel.

Jack's first impressions made for the reader on The College-On-The-Hill are completely visual, as Jack's infatuations with appearances serves as a lens in which readers can see the problematic discourse made in describing school itself.  With students greeting each other, puzzling attention to detail and objects students bring with them, and a remark made about "spectacle," visual "brilliance," and "well-made faces," brings the appearances to our attention. Instead of focusing on collegiate or scholarly imagery, this mass of college students being dropped off is "a collection of the like-minded," which ties the idea of higher learning merely a victim of the crown and an appearance-driven establishment. As a mass, they all move in a similar many, with a rare detail or individualization of a single student. When all these students seem to blend together, the nature of this specific crowd evokes an irony within the setting they're traditionally supposed to be independent, defined in their studies, and individualized when they graduate. The criticism is subtle, but consistently reinforced, using Jack as a contributor to collegiate ignorance. His inability to speak German along with his obsession with how his robe looks are factors which play into the whole of the student body, as his position places him as a leader and influencer to those within the program.

Within a scene describing one of J.A.K.'s lectures, the manner which he describes his subject, addresses the class, and composes himself is completely self-involved, walking the reader through tedious detail of his own mannerisms and tangential meanderings are aimed less as a means of education and more of a lecture for personal advice to be given, and for his opinions to be thrown into a group for absorbing. Jack himself isn't even sure of what he is saying regarding the nature of "plots"--an ambiguity to begin with. It brings to like the triviality of studying Hitler as a subject in general --a man of such colossal power, unfathomable cruelty, and incomprehensible destruction that to try and understand it within a classroom setting miniaturizes it in an alarming way. It dwarfs those studying Hitler, and more so, makes them ignorant, as trying to encompass the nature of Hitlers' cataclysmic genius becomes something of an immediate impossibility when the phrase "Hitler Studies" is even mentioned to the reader.

Francisco Tirado

DeLillo's Plotting

One thing I found interesting about this narrative is DeLillo’s usage of plot and structure. The novel is driven by Jack Gladney’s fear of death. In one of his Hitler lectures, Jack tells his students, “All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots” (26).  Although at the time Jack doesn’t understand what this means or why he even said it, it foreshadows the structure of the plot for the rest of the novel. Jack’s fear of death leads him to resist the emergence of plot in his life. Because he believes that all plots lead to the death of the individual involved, he does not want to enter into any plots that would eventually lead to his death.

                Plot is mentioned numerous times throughout the novel. Every time Jack mentions plot, it is a reminder to the reader as to where the story is headed. The beginning section of the novel, “Waves and Radiation,” there is little to no plot introduced. This portion is dedicated to the introduction of the characters and the world in which they live. The second section, “The Airborne Toxic Event,” has the beginnings of plot development. In this section, Jack is exposed to Nyodene D. and he finds himself with a sort of expiration date. Once death is introduced, the aspects of plot quickly unfold. In the third section, “Dylarama,” mystery, infidelity, and a gun are introduced. These factors lead to Jack’s plotting to uncover the secrets surrounding his wife’s pill usage and result in him hunting down the man dispensing these pills and attempting to murder him. When on his hunt for Mink, Jack repeats to himself the actions he is going to take regarding this murder: “wait for an unguarded moment, blast him in the gut three times for maximum efficiency of pain, take his Dylar, get off at the river road, shut the garage door, walk home in the rain and the fog” (293). Jack is planning the events of this plot and these events literally move deathward, but not for himself. 

What is "white noise"?

What is White Noise?

                Don Delillo’s White Noise is about a colossal event in a seemingly innocent town.  So then what does the concept of “white noise” have to do with the novel as a whole?  “White noise” is that constant chatter, meaningless rumblings that take place in everyday life whether it is from a radio station, TV set, computer or just mere background noise.  Throughout the novel the characters are constantly listening to talk radio and the alike, but the meaning behind the title goes beyond even that.  The “white noise” in the novel as a central plot point is about not just the droning sound itself but about the radical reaction to such an insignificant occurrences.  This novel explores the vast bounds that can be enumerated from a mere suggestion.  During the beginnings of the toxic event the radio lists off the side effects of exposure.  In that instance, white noise which formerly held no relevance suddenly became a reputable source.  The symptoms continued changing and with each suggestion of alteration, both Steffie and Denise changed their physical reaction the toxic event.  The girls complained of sweaty palm up until the “white noise” suggested otherwise; “There’s been a correction . . . Tell them they ought to be throwing up” (110).  And so the white noise continues to snowball throughout the text.  Fear, anxiety, and hope all stand at the knees of suggestion by white noise.

                In White Noise there is a pattern of trivial conversation topics during the most bizarre circumstance, such as the airborne toxic event.  The characters discuss things like what to eat for dinner or whether a rat is a rodent or a vermin (121).  Instances such as these further demonstrate the continual presence of “white noise” throughout the novel.  Delillo’s writing styles in general gives the reader a feeling that at times they are in fact reading white noise because the information seems like nothing more than background chatter.  The significance of all these elements bound together is the affect that “white noise” can have on a person.  It can drive a character to kill as it did Jack, barter sex for drugs as Babette did, or it can even drive a reader to attach some deep significance meaning to the most trivial of substance within a novel.

White Noise

A passage from Chapter 31 of White Noise reminded me of our in-class discussion of the most photographed barn in America.  While the family sits in their car, eating dinner, Denise discusses how mountains are always north of cities.  DeLillo wrote, “’Mountains are always upstate,’ Denise told her. ‘This way the snow melts as planned in the spring and flows downhill to the reservoirs near the cities, which are kept which are kept in the lower end of the state for exactly this reason.’”  This quote is significant because it demonstrates the way in which humans are disconnected from their environment.  This is highlighted by the use of the word “planned” as though humans had planned the environment rather than reacting to it.  In class we talked about how the aura of the barn is created by the sign that marks its importance and the people who stop to photograph it rather than anything special about the barn itself.  Although it is a different context, this is paralleled by Denise’s understanding of the role of mountains in city life.  Denise does not understand cites as being built around water supply, instead, she believes that the mountains arrange themselves around the city.  While this can be understood as simply as a child’s misunderstanding, Jack finds himself compelled by Denise’s explanation.  He wonders for a moment whether she is right.  His instincts push him in the other direction but he cannot think of any evidence to disprove her hypothesis.  This speaks to the type of world that they live in.  They exist in a realm of reproductions which disconnects them from any process of original production.  They lack the sense to tell them that people form cities in locations where they have access to resources.  DeLillo paints a picture of a family where they are so disconnected that they cannot figure out that the mountains are north of the city because people built the city south of the mountains.  This echoes DeLillo’s mention of the most photographed barn because they are the result of the same condition.  People photograph the barn because other people photograph the barn.  People live south of the mountains because other people live south of the mountains.  In the world that DeLillo creates, there is an eerie loss of the understanding of this somewhat simple concept.  DeLillo instead connects his characters to commodities and other effects of the commercialized world known as white noise.  

Lacanian Subject Formation in Garbage

As I’ve read White Noise it’s been difficult for me not to approach nearly every new development in the plot from the angle of Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly with respect to the idea of the formation of the subject. Because of this, I want to briefly talk about an idea that’s been rolling around in my head about this, one that was sharpened even more as I finished the novel.

To begin, I want to look to the scene where Jack speaks with the doctor at Autumn Harvest Farms. When the doctor questions Jack about his lifestyle, Jack hopes that the doctor will “reward [his] virtue” and “give [him] life” (279). All of this boils down to the fact Jack believes that the doctor, instead of his actual behavior in life, that will determine how long he lives. Actually, more specifically, he believes that the medical report that the doctor holds will determine the course that his life will take. Jack consciously views himself as constituted within the symbolic order of the medical report. This reminds me of Lacan’s assertion regarding the self’s radical excentricity to the self, as formed in the mirror stage when we identify with a mirror image of ourselves.

Later then, in the various scenes where Jack is struck by how quickly he can “familiarize” himself with people by way of their garbage, I feel that Delillo is playing with this idea of the external constitution of the subject (302). If, as Jack seems to believe, people are constituted in “ticket stubs, lipstick-smeared tissues, crumpled soda cans, crumpled circulars and receipts, ashtray debris, popsicle sticks and French fries, crumpled coupons, and paper napkins” then not only is our identity created by things external to us, but its also possibly defined by those things we attempt to push away from us (302). According to Jack, it seems, identity might ultimately be a product of what we push away from ourselves. Based on Jack’s thoughts and behavior in the novel, perhaps the best example of something that we attempt to push away from ourselves is death itself. This is why the scene in the supermarket where Jack and Murray discuss death and the repression of the fear of it (which, it seems, consciously brings Freudian and psychoanalytic ideas into the conversation) is ultimately quite revelatory for Jack in the way that he thinks of himself.

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.