Pensamiento - Literatura

IV. Dissenters

The family depicted in the book seems to be a gathering of individuals who take part in the processes imposed by a consumers' society while trying to survive or lead a meaningful life. They are all resisting being "incorporated into the ambient noise" (DeLillo 1993, on the readiness of literature to be neutralized). They are all "refusing to become part of the all-incorporating treadmill of consumption and disposal" (DeLillo 1997, on writers able to say no). Jack and Babette are dissenters, and their children have bred on that. Jack comments on Murrays speaking of "the American family":* "He seemed to think we were a visionary group, open to special forms of consciousness" (101). However, this process will not be dealt with in the story (another silence in the book) because the main family issue will center around the gradual dissolution of Jack's and Babette's identities out of a fear of death and around their "confusion of means" (288, ch. 37) while trying to fight it away.

The world is huge, diffuse because it has no grounding, no reference, as postmodernists explained. The threats are building up before our blinded eyes and also behind the curtains. The modern world of technology and consumerism is an appealing and threatening simulacrum of life constructed by the maniacs who manage our resources and by people's pathetic-woops-helpless passivity. It is threatening in the deep levels and appealing in the superficial levels. It neutralizes life: Join us, you won't live but you won't die. Switch onto our escapist snug mode and enjoy our wide range of products on offer -spectacular radioactive sunsets in our Wonder World.

Jack and Babette love each other and treat each other consequently-before being lost. Unable to be strong enough to bear the pressure, they fall into a death process when they make the mistake of disconnecting, adopting individual action, because they want to protect each other. But even after their dissolution they keep each other company. Their yielding to collective death does not rule out the fact that they stand as a model for the way-out. They point at the path for utopia. They are not superheroes-they are real. Jack and Babette have tried to resist being sucked in and digested, they have dissented, escaped the risk of being hypnotized by consumerism. No wonder-the offer is a replica of life, not life itself. Even though they take part in consumerist processes, neither they or their children are believers. Their fall comes from a different mistake. It breeds on a risk difficult to identify. They are overwhelmed when they connect their private human-animal fear of losing their loved one to the collective fear of the world's human-caused destruction-that danger people perceive in the air, which reverberates in the white noise of a falsified world, whose blinding light filters through its cracking fissures. Jack and Babette dissolve in the grayness of what they would never be: Babette, dependant (the gendered role of a woman; in our cultural heritage) and Jack, violent (the gendered role of a man; worded by Babette), death-slaves out of losing control on their fear but also as a result of being overwhelmed by the terrifying amount of signs pointing to the danger our species is creating and running in its faulty development. The two-member team, coordinators in a network, facilitators, conductors of awareness, who did not accept the role of conformity enforcers like traditional parents, collapse under the weight of fear and awareness. Awareness makes fear more intense when you love. (Do not ask Murray about this.) >

The family is fighting against a great giant, the greater because it is diffuse, its shape is blurred out of its magnitude, out of its immense quantities, like a distorted amplification, like huge invisible nightmare-type oblongs moving unpredictably at great speed in outer space. When the threat is diffuse people end up paralyzed and being gobbled up. You need to be able to identify the source of danger, where your threat is-like Herta Müller put it in her novel El hombre es un gran faisán en el mundo: you need to be able to point out at the black car where your murderer is waiting for you. Then you know in what direction to run. Or simply what direction to take. What course of action is possible. This is possibly what children do when managing data-make reality manageable. They also interpret them (Heinrich) or relate them to their daily experience (Denise, even Steffie). >

Let us read some instances of love, tenderness and humor, which only occur in the family, where Babette and Jack do not practice posture, where their identities are actual. >

Love, Fear and Humor. Emotional scenes come in very dramatic moments and are tenderly humorous. Let us remember when Wilder and Babette return from the doctor in the episode where Wilder cries for hours with no apparent reason: "They came out of the small bright lobby onto the street. It was cold, empty and dark. The boy walked next to his mother, holding her hand, still crying, and they seemed a picture of such amateurish sadness and calamity that I nearly started laughing" (76, ch. 16). Or the scene of the Life Saver, a loving dramatic follow-up on Babette swallowing something when the family was driving away from the toxic cloud-we will learn, a Dylar capsule. >Jack and Babette are about to spend the night in the barracks improvised for evacuated people. They have been talking about Heinrich. Suddenly Jack does some zapping: >

I moved still closer, lowered my voice even more.
"Just a Life Saver," I said.
"What?"
"Just some saliva that you didn't know what to do with."
"It was a Life Saver," she whispered, making an O with her thumb and index finger.
"Give me one."
"It was the last one."
"What flavor-quick."
"Cherry."
I puckered my lips and made little sucking sounds (134-5). >

In Part III there is an amazing scene, full of content for an analysis of information, danger and the members of the family and their relationships (173-5), when Heinrich talks about scientific findings showing there is a connection of radiation and household appliances, which would make consumerist societies most terrifying. Before he releases crucial information on radiation from the media, Jack comments in a wild interlude of humor: "He immersed a piece of steak in the gravy that sat in the volcanic depression, then put it in his mouth. But he did not begin chewing until he'd scooped some potatoes from the lower slopes and added it to the meat. A tension seemed to be building around the question of whether he could finish the gravy before the potatoes collapsed".

Danger in the Air. A crucial issue in WN connected to dissent and to death too is the individual and collective perception of the danger building in the air and the consequent wish to escape this fear. We will see how this is not made conscious in society. >

Human Suffering of No Interest to the Media

Toddler cries with no apparent reason for seven straight hours (ch. 14).
Two old people lost in a mall, one dies out of confusion (ch. 13).
Crash landing, everybody escapes death , by Bee: "'Where's the media?' 'There is no media in Iron City' 'They went through all that for nothing?'" (92, ch. 18).
Airborne Toxic Event, hundreds escape death? , by a man carrying a TV set: "The airborne toxic event is a horrifying thing. Our fear is enormous. Even if there hasn't been great loss of life, don't we deserve some attention for our suffering, our human worry, our terror? Isn't fear news?" (162, ch. 21).
Toddler cycles across expressway-escapes death or leads to death? (ch. 40).

Tabloids contain "everything we need that is not food or love" (326, ch. 40). >

There are two episodes in Part I that contribute powerfully to reinforce the basic point in the novel of humans lost and vulnerable in a world that overwhelms them: the Wilder crying scene (75) and the story around the Treadwells (59, 99). The combination of a small child crying in an unordinary way and the Treadwells being lost and risking death in the middle of a crowded place full of resources seem to make the basic points: people are lost in a context of lurking danger, we can sense it but we cannot express it-both the small child and the old people do not explain the event. >

The family does not understand Wilder's crying but they all know it is meaningful. >

I didn't know how I felt and I wanted a clue. But [Babette] looked straight ahead as if fearful that any change in the sensitive texture of sound, movement, expression would cause the crying to break out again.
At the house no one spoke. They all moved quietly from room to room, watching him distantly, with sneaky and respectful looks. When he asked for some milk, Denise ran softly to the kitchen, barefoot, in her pajamas, sensing that by economy of movement and lightness of step she might keep from disturbing the grave and dramatic air he had brought with him into the house. He drank the milk down in a single powerful swallow, still fully dressed, a mitten pinned to his sleeve.
They watched him with something like awe. Nearly seven straight hours of serious crying. It was as though he'd just returned from a period of wandering in some remote and holy place, in sand barrens or snowy ranges-a place where things are said, sights are seen, distances reached which we in our ordinary toil can only regard with the mingled reverence and wonder we hold in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions (79). >

This is chapter 16, devoted totally to the scene, and it follows a chapter on Jack giving a lecture at university dealing with simulacra and collective perception at two levels: Jack pretending and Jack giving a lecture on the collective perception of Hitler (72-3). The contrast with this real event is sharp. The glamour of the university set up is reduced to nothing in the presence of a crying child, "a mitten pinned to his sleeve": a loved one crying his sadness out, directly, with no disguise, no simulation, no mediation. >

The crying episode is followed by a chapter started by Babette saying "Isn't it great having all these kids around?" (80). Their link to actual life. But immediately Denise confronts her about Dylar and Babette resorts to their tool to divert attention: make a question on another topic. An escapist dialogue takes place. Then there is a reflection on "The family is the cradle of the world's misinformation" (81) which is a detached analysis of not quite the issue at stake-as if the author resorted to the same tactic Babette and Jack use-but which at least gives a clue on the issue at stake: "Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts." Then it is Jack's turn, the episode which was mentioned before: somebody confronts him unknowingly about his simulated identity and Jack resorts to the same tactic as his partner, avoiding the issue right away and diving into something else, a shopping spree, but with his family-the only secure and loving place, in spite of senseless action (consumerism) and the bitterness he feels before his failure. In his family his identity is not faked and it is recognized, whatever that may be: "Babette and the kids . puzzled but excited by my desire to buy" "I was one of them, shopping, at last" (83); "I began to grow in value and self-regard. I filled myself out, found new aspects of myself, located a person I'd forgotten existed. Brightness settled around me" (84). The ending makes use of a recurrent contrast in the novel to enhance the emptiness and dissent-lots of noises followed by silence, as if from our busy mad world where we keep each other company we were flung to outer space and we needed to be very far from there, therefore in silence: >

We ate another meal. A band played live Muzak. Voices rose ten stories from the gardens and promenades, a roar that echoed and swirled through the vast gallery, mixing with noises from the tiers, with shuffling feet and chiming bells, the hum of escalators, the sound of people eating, the human buzz of some vivid and happy transaction.
We drove home in silence. We went to our respective rooms, withing to be alone. A little later I watched Steffie in front of the TV set. She moved her lips, attempting to match the words as they were spoken (84). >

The image of the Treadwells lost in a mall and its consequences are dealt with in two different chapters: chapter 13 tells the story; and they reappear in the first paragraph of chapter 20, powerfully: "Mr. Treadwell's sister died. Her first name was Gladys. The doctor said she died of lingering dread, a result of the four days and nights she and her brother had spent in the Mid-Village Mall, lost and confused" (99). This chapter is the closure of Part I and it is full of meanings which could be summed up in the former "lost and confused" idea. Jack reflects upon the fact that humans, with all of their intelligence, cannot avoid the sadness from knowing they will are bound to die. We learn about what Babette, Jack, Heinrich and Denise do to fight this idea: Babette cherishes life, but all her enthusiasm does not prevent her from having "terrible dreams" (100). She does not believe that collective perception (e.g. the media referents) can save us from anything and thinks the key to knowing where you are is the children: "We're safe as long as they're around." (Not so safe, actually: Babette dissolves in TV waves at the end of the chapter.) Jack, developing on the issue of who will die first, shows he depends on Babette's love: "We are two views of the same person. I would spend the rest of my life turning to speak to her. No one there, a hole in space and time" (100-1). Heinrich says: "Whatever relaxes you is dangerous" (102), like if we still lived in prehistory, and had to watch out at every sound or shadow we detected. And then he tells his father he wastes lots of motion. >

"What do you save if you don't waste?"
"Over a lifetime? You save tremendous amounts of time and energy," he said.
"What will you do with them?"
"Use them to live longer" (102). >

Denise's "strategy [to keep alive] in a world of displacements [is] to make every effort to restore and preserve, keep things together for their value as remembering objects, a way of fastening herself to a life" (103). Reflecting upon their children Jack says "[Character] is all there, in full force, charged waves of identity and being. There are no amateurs in the world of children" (103). >

Wilder's crying and the Treadwells image in the mall have got the force of poetry or painting because they move away of action and they are rich in meaning. They say much about danger and vulnerability and being overwhelmed and lost. The beginner in life cries (dissents, knows what to express, how to express it, when to start, when to stop, what to do at every moment). The people about to exit life are unable to take any action, not even that of saving their lives. >

A Love Story and Dying. Love and death have always been a literary pair. Love leading to death, like in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. But this is not the case nowadays. We are free of many absurd conventions that were crucial obstacles for love. The love/death pair has changed in nature. In this novel one of its meanings is We think of death because we love and We are afraid to love because we die and Love is communicating. In chapter 4 Jack and Babette pose the question>> that is fundamental in the book and which begins by being a fear two lovers share, which triggers tragedy the moment they stop sharing and try to solve that fear individually: Who will die first? (15, first appearance). Once the two lovers learn about how fear of death and of losing love is dissolving their identities, they still try to reach to each other with a substitute question: How do you feel? (ch. 27-31). >

Babette turns into waves on TV, a televised death hint (ch. 20). Nobody knows anything yet (included the readers) of her individual solution to her fear. She conceals she is taking a drug against the fear of death, thus breaking communication, the anchor to identity. After telling the whole Dylar story in chapter 26, including the failure of the drug to solve her problem, she realizes she cannot keep her identity any longer, and that Jack will lose his soon, not only because of radiation in his blood, but also due to action in the form of "male homicidal rage" (predicted in ch.30), which will make (demented) jealousy a kind of radioactive agent. >

From the beginning, Babette has sought an individual solution to her fear: taking an experimental drug. Denise suspects her mother's forgetfulness is a symptom of danger, and after investigating on her own, a joint effort to find out the truth is undertaken by Jack and her. Incidentally, Babette, whose mind we can only have access to* in Part III, can explain her forgetfulness better: "It was a side-effect of the condition. Mr. Gray said my loss of memory is a desperate attempt to counteract my fear of death" (202). Of course, Babette will never tell her children, not even Denise, what her condition is. She loves her children and protects them thus from the death fear. (She cannot protect them from the world's dangers, but she actually protects them from knowing she is afraid to die, from learning about this idea explicitly.) Dylar tracking by Denise and Jack will develop throughout (ch. 9, 10, 14, 17, 21, 24, 25) till Babette explains the whole story in chapter 26. Babette says of Jack that he shelters his loved ones from the truth: "She said I made virtues of her flaws because it was my nature to shelter loved ones from the truth. Something lurked inside the truth, she said" (8). This is precisely what she is doing by hiding her fear. >

Jack sees his fear of death meet a fact: his exposure to deadly Nyodene. Heinrich and he do not realize the risk when he leaves the car for gas. It is Denise who tells Jack in the barracks he could be infected and that it is not his fault (she has checked a couple of sources). Jack decides not to tell his family he is infected, after checking it with the SIMUVAC specialist. (Denise does not ask or that they do not talk about it, like they did on Babette's case. This is probably due to literary reasons: this is no report on a family, but a novel trying to give hints and echoes of meanings.) His turning to Babette encounters the problem that Babette is lost in Dylar. So after the climax where Babette tells him (and the readers) the whole story, Jack moves desperately on his own: first he wants to try Dylar, but Denise has hidden it (ch. 27) until they explain what it is all about (something they will not do because they will not do that to their children), and he sees himself "casually thumbing through the garbage" (258-9, ch. 34); then, he falls in the pit of a classic in the gendered roles of men: conceiving an issue unrelated to adultery as adultery and imposing on himself the duty of violent vengeance. >

Jack's fear of death is connected to the issue of identity, which he explains relies on love: "Love helps us develop an identity secure enough to allow itself to be placed in another's care and protection" (29). Jack knows Babette "falls apart" (20), but Babette takes action individually because she knows Jack depends on her (and the children) to live: "You are my strength, my life-force" (199). Actually Jack keeps laying his head on her bosom in spite of sensing she has already parted (throughout Part III). >

Something lurks inside the truth. Informing is not communicating. Babette tells the Dylar story; then Jack informs on Nyodene exposure in chapter 26. The remains of Babette pulverize. This is the beginning of the end for Jack's efforts to keep an identity. The question How do you feel? which could hint at their trying to reach to each other is tricky: Babette is not trying any longer. She makes the question to try to keep Jack company in some way, for she knows he is undergoing the desperate processes she probably underwent before and cannot think properly. Then Babette will harden in chapter 30 probably because of being sure that Jack will lose himself completely exerting violence. The result of Babette's increasingly uncontrollable fear have been led her to complete detachment, a kind of death (ch. 30). The effects of uncontrollable fear now for Jack is being lost in action to avoid realizing Babette is dead (ch. 39). >

This is the nature of modern death," Murray said. "It has a life independent of us. . We study it objectively. We can predict its appearance, trace its path in the body. . We know it intimately. But it continues to grow, to acquire breadth and scope, new outlets, new passages and means. The more we learn, the more it grows (150, ch. 21). >

While exerting violence against the scientist who raped Babette (blackmail often takes this form against women), Jack realizes what Babette felt, he remembers, he recovers the link that makes him who he is, a man in love. He imagines her desperation, and his rage is neutralized. He feels compassion (ch. 39). This deserting of violence allows him to reunite Babette, in their kind of togetherness in death on the overpass (ch. 40).

There is another individual death in the novel out of fear, that of the Treadwell sister, mentioned before. The Treadwell episode of being lost and confused in the mall is similar to Jack and Babette's ultimate being lost and confused among the crowd, on the overpass and then in heaven, the supermarket, turned into a sort of Apocalypses. Death may also involve joining the terrified crowds in a world they cannot understand: >

We go to the overpass all the time. Babette, Wilder and I. . We find little to say to each other. . The sky takes on content, feeling , an exalted narrative life. . It is hard to know how we should feel about this. . most of us don't know how to feel . The spirit of these warm evenings is hard to describe. There is anticipation in the air . This waiting is introverted, uneven, almost backward and shy, tending toward silence. What else do we feel? Certainly there is awe . but we don't know whether we are watching in wonder or dread, we don't know what we are watching or what it means . I didn't know how many handicapped and helpless people there were in town until the warm nights brought crowds to the overpass (324-5). >

Babette and Jack, and Wilder, the toddler that will not grow. The household icon. He embodies the danger in the air when he cries (79), the danger lurking Babette when he cries by the TV set (104), the signal of imminent death for Jack when he announces the presence of Babette's father (242). Finally, he leads his parents wildly to the place that symbolizes collective death for them and for all (322-4). >

* Actually, this family, or non-traditional families in US American terms, which means non-consumerist families, not in the sense they do not shop but in the sense that the activity has not brainwashed them.
** DeLillo might be careful with "entering" female characters.

Next: V. Conclusion

Please, quote the author and the site: michelle renyé, at mujerpalabra.net.
Another quotation style: michelle renyé. "Dissenters Are Never Superheroes. An Essay on DeLillo's White Noise". Mujer Palabra. 2005. Path: Pensamiento. Date of Access <https://www.mujerpalabra.net>.