Due to this progressively overt presence, many critics focus on the death-fear in the second and third sections of the novel, ignoring its origins in part one. Indeed, while most critics recognize this overarching fear of death, few attempt to elucidate what informs it. Taking for granted that Jack and Babette possess, and have possibly always possessed, this fear, critics like Rosamond Rosenmeier and Jayne Anne Phillips ignore its cause and focus primarily upon its effects—the toxic-cloud-induced evacuation, Babette’s infidelity, Jack’s attempt at murder. Such analyses, however, fail to recognize the connection between the fear of death and another crucial (and oft-cited) theme in the novel: the loss of the authentic in a postmodern consumerist society. By commencing his novel with such a comprehensive and fractured portrait of postmodern family life, DeLillo seems to suggest that it is the very nature of the Gladney family from which the death-fear stems.

As Ursula Heise claims, “The abundance of Baudrillardesque scenes . . . has led many critics to interpret White Noise as a narrative showcase of the postmodern culture of the simulacrum, a novel in which simulation systematically takes precedence over whatever might be left of the real” (750). If this is the case, if nothing exists firmly in the realm of the authentic, so too might the Gladney family be seen as nothing more than a mere simulacra of the traditional family model. And while it would be impossible to define the traditional family model, the degree to which DeLillo presents the Gladney clan as fractured and compiled suggests some degree of representation, or of simulated counterfeit; they are certainly an aberration, however nebulous the norm may be. As Mary Katherine Holland astutely points out, “[the Gladney] ‘family’ comprises a collection of various genetic linkages and non-linkages; indeed, none of the children expresses a biological link between the family’s two parents” (165). This idea of the fractured family, because it provides the immediate context in which Jack and Babette must operate—more immediate, even, than the representational, consumerist society on which many critics choose to focus—is, in fact, what informs the couple’s death-fear. Traditionally, a family provides an individual with the opportunity to transcend one’s own mortality, primarily through procreation. By subverting the traditional family dynamic, DeLillo allows for no such possibility; Jack and Babette are forced to face their mortality directly and without the possibility of relief or escape.

Of course, none of this would hold any weight unless Jack himself were not at least subconsciously aware of the desire to achieve this idealized family structure, a tenuous notion in itself. As a man awash in a sea of postmodern representation, how can Jack be said to even recognize his family’s fractured nature? Lou Caton argues for this romantic interpretation of Jack’s character, calling him a “naive sentimentalist, [a] foil of the postmodernist (who still insists on universals, human nature, and the mythology of a human nature), [and who] recognizes but mourns the emergence of a constructed political postmodern culture (which rejects any universal subjectivity and sees all knowledge as interested and ideological)” (40). Caton points out two key scenes in “Waves and Radiation” that reveal that Jack is “a romantic who questions society but all along deeply values his personal relations and family”: the novel’s opening, in which Jack bears witness to a mass of parents seeing their children off to college, and Jack’s conversation in the car with his son, Heinrich, about whether or not it is raining (40). Indeed, if Jack completely bought into this culture of representation, the novel would be reduced to a series of events without significance or emotional consequence. DeLillo instead presents his protagonist in contrast to the society in which he finds himself, allowing both forces to be fully revealed. Which is not to say that Jack completely understands his desire. He is, in fact, quite unaware of his family’s being an aberration from any established norm. Caton argues that “the romantic desire for community may exist only ironically,” but that it “still exists, resisting commodification and vying for its own legitimacy” (45). Jack’s ignorance of his family’s fractured nature only exacerbates his death-fear.

White Noise opens with a procession of station wagons, a depiction of the time-honored and traditional passage from childhood to adulthood in which parents see their children off to college. The event has taken on mythic proportions for Jack; he has witnessed it now twenty-one years running. Jack describes the event as invariably brilliant, as communal, and he recognizes that the parents “[see] images of themselves in every direction” (3). He describes them as “a collection of the like-minded and the spiritually akin, a people, a nation” (4). Here, Jack seems fully attuned to what is happening. These adults are made real by their children—indeed, they exist in their children—and by their participation in this communal activity. By the simple fact of possessing a child, each parent becomes part of the larger group, and is thus exalted beyond the lonely realm of the individual.

Of course, Jack, himself an outsider, resists the community. He focuses on the “massive insurance policies” that the parents seem to suggest, and tells Babette that “they’ve grown comfortable with their money . . . they genuinely believe they’re entitled to it. This conviction gives them a kind of rude health” (4, 6). Here, Jack aligns the parents with consumerist society, suggesting that the children themselves are mere physical assets which the parents have obtained, and to which they feel entitled. When Babette points out that they, too, have a station wagon, Jack’s response is revealing: “It’s small, it’s metallic gray, it has one whole rusted door,” he says (6). This declaration can be interpreted two ways. Jack, seeing the station wagon as a cliched and emotionless symbol of the consumer-era family, may be downplaying their own possession of such a symbol in order to align himself with some higher degree of familial love. This interpretation is undermined, though, as Jack makes multiple references to his “accumulation” of both wives and children, as if he, if perhaps unconsciously, is amassing both. Andrew Saltzman describes the Gladneys predilection for accumulation thusly: With the urgency of addicts or patriots, they accumulate material possessions to defend their sense of presence, to lend them personal density and the illusion of spiritual “snugness” (DeLillo 20). Unfortunately, as Jack realizes, conspicuous consumption is self-defeating: “Things, boxes. Why do these possessions carry such sorrowful weight? There is a darkness attached to them, a foreboding” (6) . . . But abundance numbs only so far, and stays against death seem deadly themselves. (811) Neither Jack nor Babette are able to make the connection between their own accumulation of material goods and their accumulation of children (and, for that matter, spouses). Babette gleefully remarks, “Isn’t it great having all these kids around? . . . Who else can we get?” (80). Any distinction in terms of intention between the Gladneys and the community of parents in the opening scene is diminished, and Jack’s trivializing description of his and Babette’s station wagon must be read as a trivializing description of his own family. Thus, he reveals the overarching disparity between the ideal family and his own. Jack is, of course, unconscious of this disparity, and is therefore unable to make the connection between it and his fear of death.

In the midst of one of their discussions of death, Babette says that “she wants to die first because she would feel unbearably lonely and sad without [Jack], especially if the children were grown and living elsewhere. . . . She also thinks nothing can happen to [them] as long as there are dependent children in the house. The kids are a guarantee of [their] relative longevity” (99). Here, Babette acknowledges the roll her children play in informing her sense of immortality. This sense is transient, though, because it is contingent upon the children remaining dependent, which they obviously will not. The traditional idealization of the parent by the child is a natural, healthy occurrence, as the parent represents a possible future for a child—something for which the child might strive. On the other hand, the idealization of the child by the parent is inherently unsound, in that the child represents the parent’s past, something to which he or she can never return. As Holland points out, “Wilder captivates Jack and Babette precisely because he remains safely, blissfully ensconced in a preverbal world. Wilder demonstrates his complete innocence of structures of signification and simulation,” an innocence which, once lost, can never again be obtained (158). Throughout the novel, DeLillo subverts the roles of parent and child, contributing to the notion of the Gladneys as a simulacra of the traditional family (the child as a representation of the parent, the parent as a representation of the child). It is this notion, more than anything else, that informs Jack’s and Babette’s death-fear.

As many critics have pointed out, Jack’s role as the chairman of the Hitler studies program is clearly an attempt to ward off the fear of death; to create something larger than himself, something lasting. Jack hopes “that identification with one of the world’s greatest aggressors will make him less afraid of his own death” (Rosenmeier 1). Saltzman aligns Jack’s Hitler with Babette’s Dylar supply, describing both as hiding places: “By affiliating himself with Hitler, Jack pretends to guarantee himself a measure of mythical proportion” (817). A closer look at the College-on-the-Hill environment, however, reveals a further subversion of the adult/child dynamic. As Holland observes, “the members of the pop culture or ‘American environments’ department of the College-on-the-Hill are all single, childless men. . . . There is a self-indulgence among these professors of pop that seems to come from their devotion to innocent simplicity and the refusal to engage in the complications that derive from human involvement” (146). While these men are not, in fact, all single, their childishness is certainly overt: they pitch pennies in each other’s offices, they toss food at one another across the lunch table, they talk about brushing their teeth with their fingers and about pissing in sinks and crapping in toilets with no seats. Alphonse “Fast Food” Stompanado accuses Nicholas (“Nicky”) Grappa of being “a middle-aged man . . . who trafficks in his own childhood,” though none of them (as DeLillo suggests with the childish nicknames) is any more mature than the next (68). For his part, Jack calls the group “curious”; he recognizes their attempt “to make a formal method of the shiny pleasures they’d known in their . . . childhoods” (9). As with the parents with their shiny station wagons and their hefty insurance policies, though, Jack is unable to fully condemn his colleagues. He describes their overall impression as “one of pervasive bitterness, suspicion, and intrigue” (10). While wary of the men (one might argue that this wariness stems from Jack’s subconscious contempt of their denial of the romantic as much as it does from their childishness), Jack remains intrigued by them.

This intrigue is embodied most consistently by Murray Jay Siskind, whom Jack calls “an exception to some of the [other colleagues]” (10). The novel’s would-be prophet, a man who has fully resigned himself to—who celebrates, even—the postmodern culture of representation and consumption, Murray acts as Jack’s true foil. And much like he does with his other colleagues, Jack maintains a complex relationship with Murray and with the man’s theories of family: Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. . . . The family process works toward sealing off the world. . . . I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. . . . The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to me misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true. (82) Jack is clearly uneasy about Murray’s unromantic take on the purpose of family. Unable—or perhaps unwilling—to construct any sort of counter-argument, however, he allows Murray the last word. Throughout the novel, Jack maintains a reverence for this man, who has completely mired himself in theory, thus shielding himself from the fear of death. Jack refuses to contradict Murray; he admires and even exalts the man (again, unconsciously) for his triumph over the death-fear.

Along with Murray’s unmitigated acceptance of postmodern society comes a recognition of the subverted adult/child relationship. Murray is fully aware that “this is a society of kids” (49). Even his students, he claims, are “too old to figure importantly in the making of society . . . once [they are] out of school, it is only a matter of time before [they] experience the vast loneliness and dissatisfaction of consumers who have lost their group identity” (50). His unmitigated acceptance, Murray seems to suggest, is the only viable response to this dissatisfaction. Murray has come to Blacksmith in order to “be free of cities and sexual entanglements. . . . to avoid situations [and] sexually cunning people” (10, 11). Because Murray equates human interaction with sexual involvement (his constant gaze on Babette is further indication of this), his rejection can be read as a complete refusal to interact on any sort of real level with anyone. Murray’s reflections—social observations from a man who refuses to interact with the society he critiques—become simulacra in themselves. Nevertheless, the observations—especially those concerning the subverted child/adult dynamic—hold weight, since Murray seems unburdened by the fear that haunts Jack throughout the novel, and because Jack never offers any counter-argument.

The novel is abound with examples of the subverted family dynamic that Murray describes. In one of White Noise’s most oft-cited passages, Jack observes his daughter Steffie “mutter[ing] something in her sleep . . . words that seemed to have a ritual meaning, part of a verbal spell or ecstatic chant. Toyota Celica.” (148, italics DeLillo’s). Paul Maltby explores this passage in great detail, focusing on its implications of the possibility or impossibility of transcendent, visionary moments in a postmodern culture. He mentions that “what we expect [at this point in the novel] from Gladney’s daughter, Steffie, is a profound, revelatory utterance” (3). What mustn’t be ignored, however, is the very fact that the reader would expect this profundity to come from Jack’s child. In “Waves and Radiation,” both Steffie and her stepsister Denise are presented as authority figures. The two girls chastise Babette for smoking, for chewing gum, for not consuming the yogurt she buys. Denise commences and leads the investigation of her mother’s mysterious drug habit. Jack describes Denise as “a hard-nosed kid” who leads “a more or less daily protest against those of her mother’s habits that [strike] her as wasteful or dangerous,” and is forced to defend his wife against his stepdaughter, like a boy might defend his sister against parental chastisement (7). Thus, the profundity of Steffie’s Toyota Celica utterance is irrefutable (if, perhaps, beside the point) precisely because Jack accepts it as profound. The same holds true for the sustained moment of transcendence offered by Wilder, Babette’s six-year-old son and the youngest of the Gladney clan, who cries hysterically for seven hours. After the first several hours, Jack begins to notice “an ancient dirge all the more impressive for its resolute monotony . . . beyond that dopey countenance, a complex intelligence operated” (78). Jack wishes to “join him in his lost and suspended place [and to] together perform some reckless wonder of intelligibility” (78). Again, whether or not the transcendence offered by the child is authentic or even effectual—Saltzman argues that Jack “ascribes mystical properties to the episode . . . [but] remains distant from the sublimity he imagines there”—is less important than the mere fact that Jack would even seek enlightenment in his six-year-old stepson (816).

Perhaps the novel’s most sustained and overt representation of the subversion of the parent/child dynamic is Jack’s relationship with Heinrich, a child more unsettlingly precocious than either Steffie or Denise. Thomas DePietro aptly sums Heinrich up as “the most articulate skeptic [in the novel] . . . a fourteen-year-old deconstructionist, whose philosophical playfulness rivals that of Jacques Derrida” (220). He points to the same scene as Caton does, in which Heinrich argues against the existence of rain on the car windshield: Our senses? Our senses are wrong a lot more often than they’re right. . . . Don’t you know about all those theorems that say nothing is what it seems? There’s no past, present or future outside our own mind. The so-called laws of motion are a big hoax. Even sound can trick the mind. . . . What good is my truth? My truth means nothing. (23) Jack finally becomes annoyed with his son’s sophistic musings; “Just give me an answer, okay, Heinrich?” he says, and when his son continues his speech, Jack says, “First-rate. . . . A victory for uncertainty, randomness and chaos. Science’s finest hour” (24). Here DeLillo reveals, for the first time, Jack’s outright frustration with his inability to connect with Heinrich. Such a connection might allow him to pass along some slight bit of wisdom and thus instill a part of himself in his son, thereby eluding his mortality and death-fear. Instead of this connection, though, DeLillo presents a battle of intellectual wits, a battle which the father eventually—and indisputably—loses.

DeLillo assigns some responsibility for Heinrich’s authorial tone to Jack himself. Jack claims to have named his only son Heinrich because he “thought it had an authority that might cling to him. [He] thought it was forceful and impressive” (63). So forceful is Heinrich, however, that his crusade for childhood independence and the diminishing of parental power and authority (granted, he is the oldest child in the Gladney household) seems almost conscious. He demands that his father make Babette tea instead of coffee, since coffee relaxes her. “Whatever relaxes you is dangerous,” he says, “If you don’t know that, I might as well be talking to the wall” (101). Here, his tone approaches insolence, though Jack refuses—or else is unable—to address this. Heinrich’s most overt moment of familial subversion, though, comes in the form of an overheard utterance to the telephone: “Animals commit incest all the time. So how unnatural can it be?” (34). One might only speculate as to what Heinrich means here, though the implications are clear. The boy’s apology for what, in the context of traditional family values, is arguably the most unnatural act imaginable reveals his complete disregard for these values.

In spite of the children’s continual dissolution of parental authority, as well as the dissolution’s consequent infantilization of their parents, Jack initially refuses to acknowledge any dysfunction. When his daughter Bee, who lives with her mother, comes to visit, however, Jack admits that she makes them “feel self-conscious at times. . . . Her presence seemed to radiate a surgical light. We began to see ourselves as a group that acted without design, avoided making decisions, took turns being stupid and emotionally unstable, left wet towels everywhere, mislaid our youngest member” (94). Several things are revealed here. By referring to Wilder simply as the “youngest member” of the family, Jack seems to eliminate any sort of hierarchy implied by age. Wilder is simply another member, just as Babette or Jack himself is, of this dysfunctional group. Indeed, Jack reveals an underlying, subconscious knowledge that his family is less stable—less fundamentally sound—than he would have himself believe. Finally, it is important to note that this self-consciousness comes only as a result of a child’s visit. The household is visited by various adults over the course of the novel—an ex-husband, Babette’s father, Murray—yet none of them evokes the sense of unease that Bee does. Jack finds relative comfort in the presence—or at least under the scrutiny—of a fellow adult, but is made uncomfortable by the gaze of a child. Of course, the child’s gaze is insufficient in informing Jack of the source of his death-fear.

Jack and Babette’s sexuality in the novel’s first section further reveals a dissolution of traditional family values. While it is certainly discussed, and even attempted, intercourse is never actually achieved in “Waves and Radiation.” In the first scene that takes place in the bedroom—here Jack refers to his wife for the first time as Baba, an overtly infantilizing cognomen—the two decide to read pornography to one another. This seems to be a common activity for them. Many critics point to this scene as yet another instance of the simulacra making authentic human interaction impossible; Rosenmeier observes that “when Jack and Babette read to each other from their extensive library of pornographic literature, they . . . are allowing other people’s fantasies to interfere with direct physical and emotional contact” (4). The crucial fact that is often ignored, however, is where Jack goes to obtain this pornography. There is no evidence to suggest that the couple’s library of pornographic literature is in any way extensive; in fact, Jack goes to his own son’s room in order to obtain it. Furthermore, Heinrich tells his father to look downstairs, which reveals that Jack has actually asked his son to provide him with pornography, and likely—given Heinrich’s unflinching, casual response—not for the first time.

In fact, the closest Jack and Babette come to achieving sexual intimacy in this section of the novel occurs in the supermarket, in plain view of Steffie, Wilder, and Denise: “I rubbed against Babette in the checkout line. She backed into me and I reached around her and put my hands on her breasts. She rotated her hips and I nuzzled her hair and murmured, ‘Dirty blond.’ . . . I tried to fit my hands into Babette’s skirt, over her belly” (40). The conspicuous nature of Jack and Babette’s sexuality here suggests, again, a dissolution of that traditional boundary between parent and child, and possibly at an inability to achieve sexual intimacy completely independent of their children. Further, Jack’s attempt to fit his hands over Babette’s belly serves as a reminder of fact that the couple has never conceived a child together. And while Jack and Babette do manage to achieve sexual intercourse in the privacy of their bedroom in the latter two sections of the novel, DeLillo maintains the notion of the dissolved parent/child sexual barrier. The fast-food dinner scene in section three can be read as an overt metaphor for intercourse—indeed, sex in White Noise is often paralleled with consumption—the scene involves both parent and child stuffed into the family station wagon, wherein images of breasts, skin, and sucking abound (DeLillo 220).

Through this dissolution of the traditional boundaries of parent and child, as well as the subversion of the parent/child dynamic, DeLillo eliminates in Jack and Babette a sense of control over and ownership of their children. Unlike the idealized parents in the novel’s opening scene, who are “accomplished in parenthood,” Jack and Babette seem to have accomplished nothing by accumulating their various offspring (4). This lack of control (as well as the inauthentic and representational nature of the Gladney family as a whole) leads ultimately to a disconnection between parent and child, which connection would have otherwise allowed Jack and Babette to see themselves in their children and to thusly ward off the predominating fear of death.

Not only are Jack and Babette isolated from their children, though; both seem fundamentally disconnected from their own parents. DeLillo makes no mention of either character’s mother or father in the first section of the novel; indeed, when an ex-wife asks him about his childhood, Jack disingenuously responds, “Don’t ask me” (89). Babette’s father finally enters the novel at the beginning of part two, though it is only through a brief phone call, in which no dialogue is given. Babette speaks to him with “an impatience mixed with guilt and apprehension,” then hangs up the phone without a word when Jack appears in the room (107). Babette’s impatience reveals a wish to ignore her father and deny her own childhood, which Jack seems to have done already. In the end, though, Babette’s father acts as little more than an agent of death; in section three, Jack literally mistakes the man for Death, and the man’s presentation and bestowal of a gun to Jack merely solidifies this idea. Thus, by neglecting to present either character with a fully-fledged and traditional (i.e. nurturing, life-giving) parent, DeLillo simply inflates the notion of the Gladneys as an aberration from tradition.

If “Waves and Radiation,” an examination of a hyper-fractured, simulated family, serves as an explanation for Jack and Babette’s fear of death, the latter two sections can only be viewed as a reaction to that fear. Heise argues that “the ‘airborne toxic event’ at the center of the plot is by no means exceptional but simply a threat that is (or appears to be) much larger than other hazards in the Gladneys’ universe” (752). DiPietro observes that “Everyday life for [the Gladneys] has always proceeded randomly . . . full of ‘vague forebodings’ and ‘nameless dread’,” and that “The [cloud] seems to be merely another occasion to ponder death in the abstract” (219). Thus, the airborne toxic event, on which many critical assessments of the novel tend to focus, can be viewed as a mere physical representation of Jack’s and Babette’s death-fear, and as therefore inconsequential in the overall scheme of the novel. It is easy to discount the first section of the novel as less important, considering the relatively slight amount action that occurs therein. Indeed, as Jack notes, paraphrasing Hemingway, “All plots tend to move death-ward. This is the nature of plots” (26). White Noise is no exception. In section three, “Dylarama,” DeLillo, borrowing from the crime-novel genre, chronicles Jack’s absurdist quest to obtain Dylar and to murder the man who has slept with his wife. Both momentum and suspense build spectacularly, culminating in a predictable flurry of gunshots and blood. Thereafter, however, DeLillo returns to the quotidian family portrait, and it is with this image that he concludes the novel. By both beginning and ending with these family portraits, he emphasizes the importance of family in the novel, and further suggests its role in the Jack’s and Babette’s otherwise unexplained fear of death.

In White Noise’s final chapter, DeLillo presents the Gladney family as it might be after Heinrich, Steffie, and Denise have moved out of the house: “We go to the overpass all the time. Babette, Wilder and I” (308). By removing those children who most overtly represent the Gladneys’ fractured nature, DeLillo allows Jack—and, one can assume, Babette—to find solace in a simplified familial structure. A sense of contentment prevails in this final chapter; Jack has found camaraderie through the supermarket, in which shoppers “wait together, regardless of age” (310). Of course, Jack still fails to find any real comfort in his family, and there is no reason to assume Wilder will grow up to be any different from his three subversive (step)siblings. By withdrawing into the idealized, utopian (i.e. ageless) world of the supermarket, Jack finds temporary reprieve from his fear of death. This withdrawal, however, is futile, since it involves a rejection of his own family for the simulated family of supermarket shoppers, the obvious and ultimate construction of a society obsessed with consumption.

Works Cited

Supplemental Bibliography