Christian Martinez
Professor Ingrid Jayne
English 205
July 25, 2016 Living a Simulated Life in White Noise
Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise is an outsider’s look inside small town America through the eyes and ears of its first person narrator Jack Gladney. Jack is a middle-class, middle-aged white male academic, who basks in the achievement of having created a department of Hitler Studies. He lives with his current wife, Babette, and an assortment of children from their previous marriages. Jack’s preoccupation with death turned to dread after being exposed to a chemical spill, termed “the airborne toxic event” in the novel (DeLillo, White Noise 117). Desperate to escape death, Jack employed different, ultimately failed, strategies that …show more content…
In Chapter 20, Babette's sudden appearance on TV is the first case of one of the family member's being projected as a simulated reproduction through the media. Understandably, they have a hard time recognizing her at first, especially Jack. He does not see her so much as “some two-dimensional facsimile released by the power of technology,” just “waves and radiation” (DeLillo 106, 107). The family could not hear Babette but it does not matter as much as her image; people are used to hearing someone who is not there (as over the phone, for instance), but they are not used to seeing someone who is not there. Another salient example in White Noise is how simulated daily life transforms death and catastrophes into mere spectacles. The Gladneys gather around the TV set to watch disasters, and they excitedly call out for each other, “Come on, hurry up, plane crash footage” (66). They watch plane crashes and volcanic destructions, and they feel intrigued. Jack once questions the “ecstasy” people feel when watching disasters transmitted on TV; he wonders “Why is it, that decent, well-meaning, and responsible people find themselves intrigued by a catastrophe when they see it on TV?” (DeLillo 68). People watch scenes …show more content…
Noel King points to the “second-order information…scattered throughout [White Noise]” (72). He states that, “one of the novels major themes… is the persistent trope of ‘floating remarks’ derived from television and radio, supermarket loudspeakers, telephone conversations: scraps of comments, bits and pieces of assertion, knowledge, rumor, information in its broadest sense” (King 72). In White Noise, the Gladneys refer to what is seen on TV or said on the radio to interpret the daily events. For instance, in the conversation between Jack and Heinrich about the rain, Heinrich refuses to trust his senses in observing the weather and chooses to believe the radio instead (DeLillo 24). He believes that all what is broadcast on the radio is true. Rather than basing his conclusion on the empirical evidence of his senses, Heinrich surrenders to the media message, which he believes to be truer than the fact that it is actually raining at this moment. Heinrich concludes this by saying, “Our senses are wrong a lot more often than they’re right. This has been proved in the laboratory” (DeLillo 25). In this simulated modern environment, human senses have been found wrong most of the times; it is the media, the broadcast, the computer that we have to
Professor Ingrid Jayne
English 205
July 25, 2016 Living a Simulated Life in White Noise
Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise is an outsider’s look inside small town America through the eyes and ears of its first person narrator Jack Gladney. Jack is a middle-class, middle-aged white male academic, who basks in the achievement of having created a department of Hitler Studies. He lives with his current wife, Babette, and an assortment of children from their previous marriages. Jack’s preoccupation with death turned to dread after being exposed to a chemical spill, termed “the airborne toxic event” in the novel (DeLillo, White Noise 117). Desperate to escape death, Jack employed different, ultimately failed, strategies that …show more content…
In Chapter 20, Babette's sudden appearance on TV is the first case of one of the family member's being projected as a simulated reproduction through the media. Understandably, they have a hard time recognizing her at first, especially Jack. He does not see her so much as “some two-dimensional facsimile released by the power of technology,” just “waves and radiation” (DeLillo 106, 107). The family could not hear Babette but it does not matter as much as her image; people are used to hearing someone who is not there (as over the phone, for instance), but they are not used to seeing someone who is not there. Another salient example in White Noise is how simulated daily life transforms death and catastrophes into mere spectacles. The Gladneys gather around the TV set to watch disasters, and they excitedly call out for each other, “Come on, hurry up, plane crash footage” (66). They watch plane crashes and volcanic destructions, and they feel intrigued. Jack once questions the “ecstasy” people feel when watching disasters transmitted on TV; he wonders “Why is it, that decent, well-meaning, and responsible people find themselves intrigued by a catastrophe when they see it on TV?” (DeLillo 68). People watch scenes …show more content…
Noel King points to the “second-order information…scattered throughout [White Noise]” (72). He states that, “one of the novels major themes… is the persistent trope of ‘floating remarks’ derived from television and radio, supermarket loudspeakers, telephone conversations: scraps of comments, bits and pieces of assertion, knowledge, rumor, information in its broadest sense” (King 72). In White Noise, the Gladneys refer to what is seen on TV or said on the radio to interpret the daily events. For instance, in the conversation between Jack and Heinrich about the rain, Heinrich refuses to trust his senses in observing the weather and chooses to believe the radio instead (DeLillo 24). He believes that all what is broadcast on the radio is true. Rather than basing his conclusion on the empirical evidence of his senses, Heinrich surrenders to the media message, which he believes to be truer than the fact that it is actually raining at this moment. Heinrich concludes this by saying, “Our senses are wrong a lot more often than they’re right. This has been proved in the laboratory” (DeLillo 25). In this simulated modern environment, human senses have been found wrong most of the times; it is the media, the broadcast, the computer that we have to