Wilder's Portrayal Of Innocence In White Noise

Wilder’s Portrayal of Innocence One of the main characters in the novel, White Noise, is Wilder, the youngest son of Babette, Jack Gladney’s wife. Jack Gladney worried about Wilder and states, “I also wondered why his vocabulary seemed to be stalled at twenty-five words” (DeLillo 35-36). We may infer from the text that Wilder may have a learning disability. Since Wilder may have a learning disability, Wilder is a child, and Wilder does not understand death, Wilder may be the symbol of youth and innocence throughout DeLillo’s novel, White Noise. Throughout the novel, his learning disability shields him from the understanding of death, Jack and Babette wish they could be Wilder’s age again, and Jack admires and observes his child-like forgetfulness and his overall innocence. From the novel we may infer that Wilder has a learning disability. Wilder has a limited vocabulary, and does not do much besides sit on his tricycle, look out the window, and watch TV. Because of a learning disability, Wilder does not comprehend what death means: ...Wilder, the retarded boy, who is described as ‘a sort of wild child, a savage plucked …show more content…
To overcome, or set aside, this fear, Babette must turn to an experimental drug, referred to as dylar. The boy does not need dylar to live his life without a fear of dying. The boy is oblivious to the fact that he can (and will) die. Wilder does not have a fear of death because age-wise he is not close enough to his death, and the child is not able to mentally grasp the idea of his inevitable death. For example, at the end of the novel, DeLillo shows a scene of the boy crossing a major highway on a tricycle, after he passes a “dead end” on a “dead end street” (322). Although Wilder is able to cross the highway uninjured, the boy cries when he is on the other side in the