Till Death Do Us Part
White Noise written by Don Delillo, is a book of endless trivial pursuits that challenges the reader to great ends to draw conclusions from it. At the same time the book is a great commentary on contemporary issues in America. One of the major themes of the book is the role of marriage, tied with death, and how that plays a role in couple’s relationships, as well as personal lives. Marriage is never simple, but the intensity of the fear of death in Babette and Jack’s marriage increases the difficulty. Fear of death shapes the way the two act together in matrimony negatively because they keep secrets, and do not act in harmony in their marriage. The couple does find ways to function together in a cacophonous white noise. …show more content…
The question starts rhetorical, but the more the question arises in conversation between the couple, the deeper and more heated the discourse became. Simply posing the question about death lead to discomfort in their relationship because the question created a contest of who would feel more miserable about the other’s hypothetical death. Jack and Babette seemed to make a race of who could die first because both just wanted to get it over with, and not be left on Earth with the struggle of daily life. This subconscious race was entirely in contrast to how much they both feared the idea of death, let alone actually dying. Questions of death drove a wedge in the marriage by creating something that is not tangible in the marriage, but one could tell things were not lovey-dovey all the time. The tension was mostly contained to the random discourses, but the reader could see this fear as not like any other human feeling for these two. The reader could soon tell this feeling was creating some mystery, and could feel an inkling of something more brewing behind the scenes.
The brewing came to the surface in “The Airborne Toxic Event.” This was an unusual literary situation because it was a climax exactly one-third of the way through the book. While the story had a climax the brewing bubbled to the rim of the vat, but the situation was still not resolved. When Jack was told, he will die eventually this added a realism …show more content…
The fact that she is the classic female character that stays at home to raise the children, cook the meals, and so on while also having a side hobby to take up some of her time teaching, or reading to the elderly. Babette built a life of nothing truly meaningful except for the birth of her children. She has endless amounts of free time to ponder the deepest domains of her mind, thus causing her crippling inability to handle the idea of death. With her free time Babette can think of death as much as she pleases, which hurts her ability to remove the negative thoughts about death from her mind. Babette crafted a life of nothingness, and her lack of achievement has led to her not being able to find any fulfillment in life. It is obvious she lacks anything that truly makes her life worthy when she talks about the “inexhaustible” topics she can teach in her Eating and Drinking class. The complete emptiness of her life is directly responsible for her inability to handle death. Her fear of death can be attributed to the fact that she has not accomplished anything, and she feels regret about her lack of living during her life because “life without death is incomplete,” but Babette has done nothing to make her life complete, or
White Noise written by Don Delillo, is a book of endless trivial pursuits that challenges the reader to great ends to draw conclusions from it. At the same time the book is a great commentary on contemporary issues in America. One of the major themes of the book is the role of marriage, tied with death, and how that plays a role in couple’s relationships, as well as personal lives. Marriage is never simple, but the intensity of the fear of death in Babette and Jack’s marriage increases the difficulty. Fear of death shapes the way the two act together in matrimony negatively because they keep secrets, and do not act in harmony in their marriage. The couple does find ways to function together in a cacophonous white noise. …show more content…
The question starts rhetorical, but the more the question arises in conversation between the couple, the deeper and more heated the discourse became. Simply posing the question about death lead to discomfort in their relationship because the question created a contest of who would feel more miserable about the other’s hypothetical death. Jack and Babette seemed to make a race of who could die first because both just wanted to get it over with, and not be left on Earth with the struggle of daily life. This subconscious race was entirely in contrast to how much they both feared the idea of death, let alone actually dying. Questions of death drove a wedge in the marriage by creating something that is not tangible in the marriage, but one could tell things were not lovey-dovey all the time. The tension was mostly contained to the random discourses, but the reader could see this fear as not like any other human feeling for these two. The reader could soon tell this feeling was creating some mystery, and could feel an inkling of something more brewing behind the scenes.
The brewing came to the surface in “The Airborne Toxic Event.” This was an unusual literary situation because it was a climax exactly one-third of the way through the book. While the story had a climax the brewing bubbled to the rim of the vat, but the situation was still not resolved. When Jack was told, he will die eventually this added a realism …show more content…
The fact that she is the classic female character that stays at home to raise the children, cook the meals, and so on while also having a side hobby to take up some of her time teaching, or reading to the elderly. Babette built a life of nothing truly meaningful except for the birth of her children. She has endless amounts of free time to ponder the deepest domains of her mind, thus causing her crippling inability to handle the idea of death. With her free time Babette can think of death as much as she pleases, which hurts her ability to remove the negative thoughts about death from her mind. Babette crafted a life of nothingness, and her lack of achievement has led to her not being able to find any fulfillment in life. It is obvious she lacks anything that truly makes her life worthy when she talks about the “inexhaustible” topics she can teach in her Eating and Drinking class. The complete emptiness of her life is directly responsible for her inability to handle death. Her fear of death can be attributed to the fact that she has not accomplished anything, and she feels regret about her lack of living during her life because “life without death is incomplete,” but Babette has done nothing to make her life complete, or