Image Study: Jack Gladney's Academic Robe, "The Most Photographed Barn in America", Rain, and Car Crashes in the Snow

"The Rev. Benjamin Jowett." Cartoon. Postaprint: Antique Maps and Prints. Web. 9 Apr. 2011. <http://www.antiquemapsandprints.com/p-10033.jpg>.

    Throughout White Noise, Jack Gladney places emphasis on the academic robe he must wear as a professor. He likes "clearing [his] arm from the folds of the garment to look at [his] watch...because the simple act of checking the time is transformed by this flourish" (DeLillo 9). The robe is not only a dignifying garment for Jack Gladney, but a protective cover that gives him a sense of control. When talking to a SIMUVAC agent about whether he was harmed by his exposure to Nyodene D, Jack Gladney "wanted [his] academic gown..." when faced with the possibility of early death (DeLillo 142). Like a child yearning for their blanket or stuffed animal, Jack wanted his academic robe, because it gives him confidence and authority. 

Clow, Jeff. The Most Photographed Barn in America. Photograph. Flickr. 28 Aug. 2006. Web. 9 Apr. 2011. <http://farm1.static.flickr.com/92/243836982_c3025b2bd5.jpg>.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         
    "The Most Photographed Barn in America", however seemingly insignificant, makes a philosophical statement. Dozens of tourists are taking pictures of the barn, but Murray notes, "no one sees the barn...once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn" (DeLillo 12). This conclusion suggests that the photographers aren't capturing the barn, but the idea that it is the most photographed barn. The barn loses it's significance when it's significance is pointed out. Murray also says, "We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura....We only see what the others see" (DeLillo 12). Jack Gladney and Murray Siskind's visit to "The Most Photographed Barn in America" corresponds with one of the important themes in White Noise: conformity.

Photograph. Cars for Keeps. Cars for Keeps, 6 Apr. 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2011. <http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/images/2008/09/09/wipers.jpg>.

 

 

 

      
    Rain is an image in the novel that serves as a discussion topic between Jack Gladney and his son, Heinrich. The real discussion is rooted in the difference between actuality and illusion. When Jack tries to reason with his obstinate son that it is indeed raining, Heinrich responds, "You're so sure that's rain. How do you know it's not sulfuric acid from factories across the river? How do you know it's not fallout from a war in China? You want an answer here and now...How do I know that what you call rain is really rain? What is rain anyway?" Heinrich struggles with a very complex metaphysical matter. Is human perception of reality real? Heinrich declares that one is never completely sure of anything.

Reed, Judy. Photograph. The Post. The Post, Dec. 2009. Web. 9 Apr. 2011. <http://cedarspringspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/N-Accident11.jpg>.

    When Jack Gladney asks Alfonse Stompanato, a chairman at the college, why "decent, well-meaning and responsible people find themselves intrigued by catastrophe", Stompanato responds, "Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them, we depend on them" (DeLillo 65-66). This theory is proven when a car skids off the road during the evacuation. Heinrich is especially fascinated by the scene. Jack observes that "[Heinrich] was practically giddy...Did he seek distraction from his own small miseries in some violent and overwhelming event? His voice betrayed a craving for terrible things" (DeLillo 123). This exemplifies human's nature to be attracted to calamity. The description of Heinrich's reaction is very extreme, as he grew "giddy" from seeing a terrible accident. However, Jack Gladney says that even "decent" people are "intrigued by catastrophe".

Television

"For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is." Page 66

    So far in the novel, television has been a recurring motif. It's the characters' main source of information and entertainment, and allows for them to feel isolated from what is going on in the world. They reduce real disasters to just something that happened on TV. Television and media has become a universal obsession with all the characters in the novel. Television reflects their rampant consumerism ("Look at the wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. 'Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it.'" Page 51), their passive isolation ("If [the town's] complaints have a focal point, it would have to be the TV set, where the outer torment lurks, causing fears and secret desires." Page 85), and their apathy ("In the psychic sense a forest fire on TV is on a lower plane than a ten-second spot for Automatic Dishwasher All." Page 67). Watching TV and having a media obsession is one of the only ways the characters can connect with each other.

Rhetoric Study

Pages 45-46:
    "Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn't just some neurons firing or something? Maybe it's just an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there I am in Montana and I find out I really didn't want to go there in the first place. I can't control what happens in my brain, so how can I be sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much less Montana next summer? It's all this activity in the brain and you don't know what's you as a person and what's some neuron that just happens to fire or just happens to misfire. Isn't that why Tommy Roy killed those people?
    In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automated teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. The system hard-ware, the mainframe sitting in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something or deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed. A deranged person was escorted from the bank by two armed guards. The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies."

    The main focus of the rhetoric used in this passage is to show how society, the characters in the novel, and interactions are becoming depersonalized and highly mechanized. The diction is slightly pretentious, as it is throughout most of the novel. The first paragraph uses devices to show how people themselves are becoming mechanized. Scientific terminology is used, such as: "cortex," "neurons," and "medulla" (though it's not too convoluted and still understandable) to show how such a personal thing like thinking and making decisions is not being thought of as highly impersonal, and that the human brain functions just like a machine.
    The second paragraph shows how interactions are depersonalized and the people in this society prefer that. It's interesting how the only instance of using personal diction (such as "relief and gratitude" and "support and approval") occurs when the narrator is talking about his interaction with a machine. He even describes the interaction as "pleasing," which is very telling of how people in this society view other people. They prefer interacting with machines that are "sitting in a locked room in some distant city." The author uses asyndeton ("I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request") in order to emphasize how automated the process is.  It's also interesting how the author has included the little detail of the "deranged person" who was being "escorted from the bank by two armed guards." The juxtaposition of this sentence with Jack Gladney's interaction with the machine system at the bank also conveys the idea that people in this society much prefer the efficiency of interactions with machines, no matter how depersonalized these interactions are.

Themes in American Literature: Ideal American Communities

    Don DeLillo uses the town of Blacksmith and the College-on-the-Hill to illustrate ideal American communities. By naming the school that Jack Gladney teaches at, “College-on-the-Hill”, the institution is immediately put upon a pedestal. The simple, good-natured town of Blacksmith and the college epitomize the idea of utopian suburbs.
    At the beginning of the novel, Jack Gladney describes the “long shining line [of station wagons] that coursed through the west campus” (DeLillo 3). These station wagons- symbols of conventional conformity- are filled with college students returning from summer break. Gladney notes the “assembly of station wagons, as much as anything they might do in the course of the year, more than formal liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection of the like-minded and spiritually akin, a people, a nation” (DeLillo 4). The station wagon is a stereotype of the all-American, middle-class family. In Gladney’s perspective, it is also apart of the charade that these families put on so that they can fit in.
    Murray Siskind, a visiting professor at the College-on-the-Hill, is from a nearby city. His accounts of city life contrast the “small-town setting” of Blacksmith (DeLillo 10). Murray Siskind reveals to Jack Gladney that “[he] can’t help being happy in a town called Blacksmith” (DeLillo 11). He says that he “[wants] to be free of cities and sexual entanglements…[In cities] you get off the train and walk out of the station and you are hit with the full blast. The heat of air, traffic and people. The heat of food and sex. The heat of tall buildings” (DeLillo 10). Not only does Blacksmith differ from big cities physically, but it differs from big cites morally. The juxtaposition of the “small-town setting” and the city, exaggerates Blacksmith’s moral purity.
    The primary settings of the novel, Blacksmith and the College-on-the-Hill represent common America: the values, the people, and even the uniformity that suburbs force people to succumb to.
   

Character Study

In Don Delillo’s White Noise, there are several main characters introduced throughout the novel. The main character and narrator of the story is named Jack Gladney. He has a strong fear of dying and spends much of his time worrying about this. He constantly wonders about him and his wife’s death and asks “who will die first?” (30). He is the chairman of “Hitler Studies” at the College-on-the-Hill. Murray Siskind, a professor at the College-on-the-Hill, obsesses over his desire to teach an “Elvis studies” program, similar to Jack’s Hitler’s studies. He always tries to impress others with his highly academic dialect, even for the simplest conversations. For example, when at the supermarket, he overanalyzed the simple art of packaging into a way more complex thing “flavorless packaging…I feel I’m not only saving money but contributing to some kind of spiritual consensus” (18). He’s a satire of the modern college professor. Babette is Jack’s husband; she teaches a posture class and raises the children, but her main occupation involves comforting Jack “whatever she is doing, makes me feel sweetly rewarded, bound up with a full-souled woman”(5). That is until she is caught for having an affair with Willy Mink, “an unsupervised well-built human” (300), or “Mr. Gray” who trades the experimental drug “Dylar” for sex. He’s very mysterious and really isn’t mentioned much until the end of the novel. Jack and Babette have many children, some from previous marriages. The more significant children to the book are Heinrich, Steffie, Denise, and Wilder. Denise is the bossy eleven-year-old daughter who criticizes Babette for several things such as her health. For example, when Denise saw Babette chewing gum, she said “that stuff causes cancer…in case you didn’t know” (41). Steffie is the innocent and sensitive seven-year-old daughter who has difficulty witnessing people on television get hurt, physically and emotionally such as when she was “brought close to tears by a sitcom husband arguing with his wife” (64). Heinrich, the fourteen-year-old son, is often characterized as awkward, the oddball in the family. He’s dubious and constantly disagreeing with Jack. Jack believes “I have a sense that his ready yielding to our wishes and demands is a private weapon of reproach” (22). Wilder is the slowly-developing son who never talks in the novel but cries a ton but still seems to comfort his parents the most out of all the children “there was something permanent and soul-struck in this crying” (77).  Although some of these characters have larger roles than others, each brings an important significance to the plot of the novel.