Student Zone

“White Noise” takes place in a town called Blacksmith in middle America. J.A.K. Gladney works at the College-on-the-Hill, where he is the head of the Hitler studies department. J.A.K. watches the kids arrive for the school year in a routine, almost ceremonial process. He notes the things the students have packed in the station wagons like “the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges…” J.A.K lives in the part of Blacksmith that is almost separate from the college, the town, with his wife Babette. Her and J.A.K. have four kids living with them from their previous marriages.
J.A.K. has a struggle getting on the same level with his son, Heinrich, who is a skeptical fourteen-year old. While in the car one day Heinrich says, “It’s going to rain tonight.” J.A.K. replies, “It’s raining right now,” and then Heinrich says, “The radio said tonight.” They continue to argue there sides of the stories, ideas versus facts. This sort of reference to a source of outside knowledge, in Heinrich’s case the radio, is a common theme. The family and other characters will state factual information that they heard somewhere, but they don’t really think about the content or even add their own thoughts to it, they just recite what they heard. This instance also shows a difference between the information sources of the young and the old. Whenever one of the children hear something factual from any source of information, like TV, books, and radio, they immediately believe it and quote it often. For example the daughters Denise and Steffie gang up on Babette in the kitchen because she is chewing sugarless gum, which the girls originally told her to chew. Denise said to her, “There was no warning on the pack then. They put a warning on which I would have a hard time believe you didn’t see.” The girls wanted their mom to chew sugarless gum, and it was fine with them until they read the warning on the pack, which immediately made them change their minds. On the other hand you will find the parents telling their children information that they learned over time, or were taught by other people. This kind of common knowledge information has no chance of convincing their children of anything.
After the family evacuated the town after the toxic event, they were in some barracks on an abandoned boy scout camp. J.A.K. describes the inside as having “the kind of low-level rumble that humans routinely make in large enclosed places.” This is one of many references to sound pitches. The family also talked about dogs and how they could hear things we couldn’t hear. This brings up the backdrop of what white noise is. It is sounds that are created by our everyday things. Electric appliances hum out a high pitched sound while humans are low. There are levels of sound that most of us don’t even notice anymore. All of these sounds are white noise. These appliances are especially important because without their everyday hum white noise would be reduced to something else. Not only are these appliances comforting physically but they create the comfort of white noise. J.A.K.’s friend Murray put it well in the supermarket when he said, “Energy waves, incident radiation. All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering, rearranging, peeling off the layers of unspeakability.”
Waves and radiation are all over in many different forms. J.A.K. has “Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me,” when he checks his balance on the automatic teller machine and the number matches the amount he had in his head. There are also sound waves. There are waves of color. There is radiation from their microwave. Waves and radiation are all around the Gladney family. This are the things that make them, and the rest of the world feel content and comfortable.

Do you think that now, two decades after white noise was written, the white noise in our everyday life is the same as in the book, or on a different level?

J.A.K. and most of the characters in dark novel White Noise seem to share an obsession with death. J.A.K. and his wife Babette every now and then ponder about who will die first. “The question comes from time to time, like where are the car keys….Sometimes, I think our love is inexperienced…The question of dying becomes a wise reminder….Simple things are doomed.” Both want to die first (though J.A.K. “secretly” doesn’t) because they think that they wouldn’t be able to go on without the other.

I think, however, J.A.K.’s particular death infatuation and the fact that he says, “simple things are doomed” is a foreshadowing of Part 2 of the book. ( a part of the book that I think isn’t a far cry from what World War II could have been like for some….)

J.A.K.’s colleague Murray has a different obsession with death that is more symbolic, more apathetic, “Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think. Dying is a quality of the air.” He doesn’t consider death as something personal.

Meanwhile J.A.K. often thinks of his own death to the point of obsession by reading obituaries and comparing. “When I read the obituaries I always note the age of the deceased, automatically I relate this figure to my own age….”

All of these little clues (as well as the short evacuation of the school that mysteriously is mentioned from time to time subtly) are foreshadowing for the second part of the book where this looming fear of death actually surfaces into a reality with the billowing cloud of toxic waste fumes. It was when J.A.K. and his family were evacuating their own homes and heading to a shelter that he made a horrible mistake. “I Drove in, JUMPED OUT OF MY CAR, rand around to the pumps…..” He
exited his car for two and a half minutes and put gas in the car.

A mock specialist later read to J.A.K. his fate according to computerized data due to the exposure. “This is Nyodene D. A whole new generation of toxic waste….I tapped into your history and I’m getting bracketed numbers with pulsing stars. We definitely have a situation….It’s a question of years…”

J.A.K stood absolutely still. “Death has entered.”

Question: do you think Babette will miss J.A.K. as much as she claims she will if he dies first, or is she lying like J.A.K.?

Summary
“White Noise” essentially is from the point of view of J.A.K., who is a college professor at College-on-the-hill, a small town college campus. He, like all the other professors there, dresses in a sleeveless dark cloak and also added a pair of dark sunglasses after the college chancellor suggested that he “become more ugly” to help his career.

J.A.K. and his college are “internationally well known” for his studies of Hitler and the program he has set up in the college for extensive Hitler studies. J.A.K. has been married numerous times and at the moment is wed with Babette and they live with their children from previous marriages. Babette teaches adult education, mostly classes on posture.

He also has befriends Murray, a visiting lecturer and professor who wishes to start a program similar to J.A.K.’s only with a focus on Elvis. Murray also seems to have some sort of interest in J.A.K.’s wife, saying that he is lucky to have her and that her “hair is very important.” He is often eyeing her or latching arms with her when they randomly meet at the grocery store. One of his sons, Heinrich is extremely intellectual and an almost mirror image of J.A.K. and he is constantly challenging everything, including things that J.A.K. says.

Question: do you think Murray is romantically interested in Babette?

Delillo’s White Noise is based in a small town called Blacksmith. The city is located in a college town that seems to be the only remaining purpose of the town. Jack and his wife Babette live with their four children (from previous marriages of both of them. He is a professor of Hitler studies and she teaches Yoga and reads to the blind. What seems to be a normal Middle American town and an average family is quite the opposite. The oldest son plays chess with a convicted killer, and the youngest daughter is obsessive with waste and health. The family becomes even stranger when you realize their obsession with death.
The parents seem to be the most concerned. They constantly have discussions about, “ Who will die first?”. They argue and defend their reasoning why both of them would like to be first because of the pain it would cause to be left behind. Not only does Jack constantly think about death, he reflects on himself thinking about death. He thinks that, “ The question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures our innocence of the future”. His obsession may be due to the fact that he teaches a course that is filled with death and killing.
The oldest son plays chess through the email with a man who is spending his life in jail for killing four people, five if you count the guard. He may have received his obsession from his father, but his mother may be responsible as well. She now lives in place where, “monkey-worshiping and prolonged and hideous deaths occur”.
Babette’s youngest daughter spends her days telling other how to save their lives. She rags on her mother about what to eat and how to live. She is in fear of the products around them and is paranoid about their affects. The baby may be learning from her now that he stares into the oven all day long.
The problem is that the family thinks about death and then relates it to their own lives. The family is not living their lives because they are so concerned about what is going to happen and when. They need to be told that you cannot escape death.
Although they may seem crazy to us, they could be right. Death is all around us. Maybe we need to focus on it more, or is the family crazy and in some way bringing death on by all this madness?

Wait, no come back... thats my post down there.

The mention of death, dying, and the time just before death, when we become most conscious of life, is almost constant throughout White Noise. DeLillo uses death as a symbol of human consciousness, a constant that has, does, and will separate man from animal. The point in the story where Jack has been diagnosed with exposure gives us a glimpse into DeLillo's ideas of death and postmodern entropy.

"You are said to be dying and yet are separate from the dying, can ponder it at your leisure, literally see on the X-ray photograph... the horrible alien logic of it all. It is when death...is televised... that you sense an eerie separation between your condition and yourself. A network of symbols is introduced, an entire awesome technology wrested from the gods. It makes you feel like a stranger in your own dying."

This quote is important because as far forward as it looks to modern man, the externalization of death, the separation between the quantifiable disease and the irreconcilable human being, it also looks back to that first defining characteristic between man and animal. And in the story, after that jarring “fall from grace”, Jack “needed a distraction.” Looking at it in this way DeLillo has almost brought the purpose to civilization that he has been searching for into light. The want of man after self-realization is merely distraction. But watch, in the story, the first thing Jack comes to after this is his wife Babette reading about, “Life After Death Guaranteed with Bonus Coupons.” Death is always there for Jack, Man, and civilization, and the distraction is always lacking.
Q: Is there a reason for DeLillo to bring the distraction to death and Death itself so close together? When the civilization man creates to distract from his self-conscious awareness of Death becomes so hostile that death is unavoidably presented what does man and/or civilization do? Does this tie in with the questions posed by Heinrich and what modern man has to teach civilizations of the past? Or is the answer always: distract yourself from your awareness of your doom?

White Noise,
A dissection of everything that's human. The story is an interesting one, that of a family. Jack, the main character, the father and the husband is also the narrator. He teaches about Hitler at the college on the hill. His wife has crazy blonde hair and is an adorable person, neurotic in her own way. Their children, I think there is four, are intellectual as well as confident in their ways. The oldest, 14 year old, makes the most intriguing comments. Nothing is ever how it seems. "What is rain anyway?" Then there is Murray, a friend, also a professor. He finds the family, especially Babette, Jack's wife, full of intriguing secrets and priceless information. He is also really cool. "They are taking pictures of taking pictures", is what Murray says while he and Jack observe the Most Photographed Barn in America, and the people surrounding it. This reminds me of a line from Fight Club: “a copy of a copy of a copy." They live in a small town, which seems the ideal setting for this story. Many of the characters have come from cities, and the experience was that of constant congestion.
This story is full of analytical conversations, whether it's why the wife should die before the husband or a discussion about the fact that both Elvis and Hitler were "mama's boys." There is constant reference to death, but instead of a sense of darkness that naturally comes with the subject, I get a sense of enlightenment, and it’s the acceptance of death that's emphasized. The importance of this acceptance is being able to let go of the fear and sadness. The author gets across the message that because we are human, we are superior over all the other creatures, animals, we have great potential in development, because we have that option, but at the same time we are fully aware that one day we all will die. We aren't everlasting, nor should we be, and it scares us, but it doesn't have to. The author realizes that and he wants to pass it along.
It isn't so much about what happens, but how it is perceived. The story isn't full of mystery, but the characters are captivating, which is what makes this book so much fun to read.

Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” is a novel set in a small college town in the mid-1980’s. It is not clear where, exactly, this town is, but my best guess has it located somewhere in the northeast corner of the States (possibly Vermont). It tells the story of a professor, or more accurately, the chairman of the Hitler studies department at the college. Throughout the novel, we are given anecdotes about the professor, Jack Gladney, and thus are able to piece his life together nicely. His wife, Babette, who isn’t his first, incidentally, is a volunteer teacher among other things, and aside from becoming hysterical when family members are injured, acts as a pillar of reason in Jack’s life. The other main character is a friend and colleague of Jack’s, a quirky sort-of guy named Murray.

One of the themes throughout the novel is death and dying. In fact, it seems that as much as the subject is mentioned throughout our excerpts, that DeLillo has some sort of morbid fetish. The topic is manifested in that most of the characters in the novel have a good sense of realism and reason, and in that way explore the topic of death in that way. It is used mainly in a way to portray the inevitability of some things, but mostly, DeLillo wants to show the reader that Jack has a sense for such things that most people don’t. The inevitability and reason of the subject is portrayed nicely in the passage, “Tibetan’s try to see death for what it is. It is the end of an attachment to things.” But, the way that death relates to the title is more interesting. White noise, in my opinion, is used to give a sense of how most people are disconnected with each other and with such thoughts as reason in death. It shows a contrast in how Jack, Babette, and even Murray have an acceptance of death, whereas everyone else chooses to ignore it.