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Reflection on Literary Essay
1) Standard Met:
2) Objective:
3) Steps Taken:
4) Writing Prompt:
5) Conclusion: » What did you think? The essay was easier then I thought. Although I think either my essay or the thesis was a bit off. I still think the book was pretty boring and unrealistic. It seemed very monotone to me. As if the story was told in white in black. I don't know why I think this way. It just how it came across to me. Literary Essay - The Fear of Death The fear of death is something everyone has to deal with at least once in their life. It is something that is unavoidable. Some people learn to accept it and continue on with their lives. Others deny it and don’t face it until their time comes. Many try to avoid thinking about it by focusing on other things and just pushing the fear away. Don Delillo satirizes the way people attempt to eliminate or control, instead of accepting, this fear through his book, White Noise, by showing us how idiotic or silly some of these tactics are. The main character Jack Gladney and his wife Babette both appear to suffer from this fear more then normal people. They think of it constantly, both worried about who will die first, each thinking up different solutions to try to do away with this fear. Babette depends on their children to soothe her fears. “She also thinks nothing can happen to us as long as there are dependent children in the house. The kids are a guarantee of our relative longevity. We’re safe as long as they’re around. But once they get big and scatter, she wants to be the first to go.” (Pg. 100, Paragraph 7) This idea would make sense if the world was fair; if children never have to face the death of one of their parents. However the world isn’t fair. Many children lose their parents to the hands of death every year. Many mothers die giving birth to their children. Depending on an idea like this doesn’t do anything except maybe give oneself a quick moment of relief which disappears just as fast. Babette also attempts to rid herself of this fear by taking an untested, unapproved drug called Dylar. So in other words, she puts herself out as a human lab rat. The steps she takes to acquire this drug is that of a desperate person. Even though she volunteered to be a test subject they said they it was too risky. So she goes and makes a private deal with Mr. Gray, the project manager. “It involved an indiscretion. This was the only way I could get Mr. Gray to let me use the drug. It was my last resort, my last hope. First I offered him my mind. Now I offered my body.” (Page 194, Paragraph 2) This fear of death consumes her, making her do idiotic things such as dealing with a man in a grubby hotel who will give her untested drugs in exchange for sex. We as the readers can clearly see this paranoia about death is clouding her judgment. This wasn’t her “last resort” or her “last hope”. There are other ways to deal with fear. She could have talked to someone like a therapist or try to understand her fear more deeply. Perhaps what she’s scared of isn’t actually death but something else, like being alone. Which would explain why she wants to die before Jack does. But this decision she makes is thoughtless. She’s turning to some illegal magical pill that isn’t even proven to work. Later in the book we meet Mr. Gray (who’s real name is Willie Mink) who turns out to be a pathetic man who’s so consumed by this fear that he eats the pills like candy and jumps at the mention of fatal accidents due to the side effects of the medication. “’Plunging aircraft,’ I said, pronouncing the words crisply, authoritatively. He kicked off his sandals, folded himself over into the recommended crash position, head well forward, hands clasped behind his knees. He performed the maneuver automatically, with a double-jointed collapsible dexterity, throwing himself into it, like a child or a mime.” (Page 309-310, Paragraph 8) Babette got medication from a man like this? It truly was an idiotic desperate act. We can see just how stupid she was. Jack is just as bad, or possibly worse. Even though he knows that Dylar didn’t work on Babette he is still determined to get his hands on it to try to make his fears disappear. After having a talk to Murray yet again about a way people try to elude the fear of death, or death itself, Jack comes up with a crazy idea to get the Dylar. His plan is influenced by what Murray said about how people kill to make themselves feel like they can’t die. “I believe Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of use are diers. We don’t have the disposition, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. We let death happen. We lie down and die. But think what it’s like to be a killer. Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up...In theory, violence is a form of rebirth...The killer in, theory, attempts to defeat his own death by killing others. He buys time, he buys life.” (Page 290-219) Listening to this, Jack comes up with a plan to kill Mr. Gray and take his supply of Dylar. Even when he goes to the hotel and sees the type of man Mr. Gray is – someone who obviously doesn’t appear as any type of scientist or doctor or anyone who would be qualified to create and distribute medication – he still tries to get the Dylar. All he ends up doing is creating unnecessary pain for both him and Mr. Gray. His plan didn’t solve anything. He didn’t get the Dylar, he didn’t get rid his fear of death. It was a moronic act. Delillo is showing us how foolish people become when they think too much of this fear. Delillo also puts in many other ways people try to deal with this fear of death. A lot of them seem so silly or useless that it’s funny. For example, when they’re evacuating the town because of the Toxic Airborn Event, SIMUVAC, the evacuation team is using this real life situation to rehearse for a simulation. “’But this evacuation isn’t simulated. It’s real.’ ‘We know that. But we though we could use it as a model.’” (Page 139, Paragraph 4 & 5) Later, SIMUVAC runs practice simulations in which Jack’s daughter, Steffie, participates. “’She seems so well-adjusted to the role.’ ‘It could save her life someday,’ he said. ‘How can pretending to be injured or dead save a person’s life?’” (Page 207, Paragraph 4, 5 & 6) People like to run simulations like this to feel like they are in control. So that if a real disaster happens they will feel like they will be able to get out of it alive. They want to control the uncontrollable. Delillo satirizes these simulations by making them seem like a game, something not even the people running the simulations take all that seriously as we can see by the way they use a real event to model for a simulation. Like Jack said, how would pretending to be dead help you survive in a disaster? There was also the plane whose engine stopped running in mid flight. Everyone started doing the procedures as if they were going to crash into a mountain or something, not plunge down hundreds or thousands of miles from the air. They did this to feel in control of the situation. If we do this we won’t die. It’s been practiced, we can’t die. People like to think this way to comfort themselves. If they can convince themselves they’re not going to die then they need not confront their fear of death. The fear of death is something we all face in different ways. Delillo shows us how some of those ways are simply stupid. He’s trying to tell us not to get too caught up in this fear or else we may end up like Babette - sleeping with a man to get magical drugs, or like Jack – trying to kill a man for those same drugs that do not work. From a readers point of view we can see that the simulations are just a way to calm the public so that people feel like if somewhere were to happen the situation would be under control. But how are we supposed to control a disaster? Disasters happen randomly. Every disaster is different so how can we “simulate” one? It’s impossible. People only do it to reassure themselves. They try to make themselves believe that as long as they know the proper procedures then everything will be ok in any event. It’s happening now in real life, not just in Delillo’s, White Noise. With all these natural disasters that have happened, people are starting to run simulations, trying to control the uncontrollable. We do it in schools with fire drills and earthquake drills. True they do help if a fire or an earthquake was to happen, but it’s more about reassuring the students and the staff. |
