COMPLETED VERS WHITE NOISE RESPONSE
TERM 4 YEAR 10 INDEPENDENT
READING OR VIEWING RESPONSE
Your name: Noah Nishihara
Author/Director: Don DeLillo 1984
Title: White Noise
1. In one or two paragraphs, summarize the plot.
2. Write about one character in two or three paragraphs. Describe
the character. Why did you like or dislike this character? How did the author
or film maker make you admire or dislike the character? How does the author or
director use the character to develop ideas in the narrative?
3. Choose one event in the story, or a scene in the film. Write
two or more paragraphs in which you describe what happens and explain why it is
important to the narrative. Explain how the event develops the story’s ideas.
Achievement Standards |
Grade |
1.2 Ability to explain how language
features, images and vocabulary are used to represent different ideas and
issues in texts. 1.4 Ability to
select evidence from texts to show how events, situations and people can be
represented from different viewpoints. |
|
MsBourlioufas’s comment |
4. In two paragraphs, explain how the author or director keeps
you interested in the book as a whole. Explain the effect of two of his or her
techniques. Use specific examples in your explanation.
5. Write a paragraph or two about what you learn about yourself
and others from this narrative.
6. Would you recommend this book to other readers? Why/why not?
White
Noise/Panasonic Review
J |
ack Gladney teaches Hitler studies at
College-on-the-hill and lives with his wife Babette, his children
Steffie, Denise, Heinrich, and Wilder in a town called Blacksmith. The novel
begins with packed station wagons arriving at the campus filled with students
while Jack observes it. After numerous philosophical everyday life
descriptions, the main complication is introduced in the form of an ‘airborne
toxic event’. The outcome of this event
in which a train derails is that toxic chemicals are released into the air and
are absorbed by Jack. Jack then begins his obsession with death. The second
complication is introduced in the form of a ‘psycho-pharmaceutical’ by the name
of Dylar which is being taken by Jack’s wife Babette. The provider of this
unlicensed drug is referred to with a fake name and has made Babette pay for the
samples of the drug. While restless activities become prevalent in Jack’s
behaviour, his father-in-law brings him a gun. After being told of the location
where the drug provider stays, Jack finds and shoots the person responsible. Jack
is shot in the process but escorts the man he shoots to the nearest hospital.
Jack seemingly cures his worries about death when he observes Wilder cross a
highway on a tricycle.
Jack Gladney, who has a full name of
J. A. K. Gladney, teaches and holds the position of chairman of Hitler studies,
which is invented by him. The author has given him an understanding of himself
as a fake figure, and makes it clear to readers also. An example of this is the
decision to make him a professor of Hitler studies who cannot speak German. He
describes himself as ‘I am the false character that follows the name around.’
This ‘name’ comes from his previous ‘agreed that I should invent an extra
initial and call myself J.A.K. Gladney, a tag I wore like a borrowed suit.’ This
does not help readers to admire him at all. In addition, he says ‘I was living
in short, on the edge of a landscape of vast shame.’ His jealousy of the doctor
(drug provider) (‘homicidal rage’)and curiosity of the Dylar drug as well as
the urge to use it are all factors which allow us to understand him as a
character in the story. However, they only work to make us dislike the
character. He is not to be admired or despised.
Many of his actions are directly
related to his subtle but consistent fear of death caused by his exposure to
Nyodene D. Through his narration and the structure of the novel, we are given
an image of what life is for Jack. White noise, combining both artificial and
natural sounds sweep over Jack, and it is what the novel talks of. The dialogue
and characterisation of Jack is used to develop ideas in the narrative. He asks
the rhetorical question ‘Who will die first? This question comes up from time
to time, like where are the car keys.’ His method of speech is straightforward.
It’s extremely personal too: ‘That night, seconds after going to sleep, I
seemed to fall through myself, a shallow heart-stopping plunge. Jarred awake, I
stared into the dark, realizing I’d experienced the more or less normal
muscular contraction known as the myoclonic jerk. Is this what it’s like,
abrupt, peremptory? Shouldn’t death, I thought, be a swan dive, graceful,
white-winged and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed?’ Then directly
afterwards: ‘Blue jeans tumbled in the dryer.’ The effect of the choice of
words is interesting but indescribable.
The ‘Airborne Toxic Event’, so called
as the gas of toxic poisons rise into the air from a derailed train carriage,is
the greatest complication. It begins when Jack finds Heinrich on a ledge of his
house, using binoculars to view the event of an insignificant train derailment
and the cloud emerging from it. The family repeats ‘nausea, skin irritation,
and sweaty palms’ as the symptoms of being exposed to this poison, as they hear
it from the radio. Jack continuously repeats that the wind will not blow the
gas towards their house. When his familyquestion him on why he is so confident,
he merely repeats that ‘it will not because of the fact that this town is not
that sort of place’.
This event marks the beginning of a
problem for Jack, something which will reduce his life and work down to the
core, where Jack is actually suffering from the knowledge of his impending
death, caused by this cloud of toxic chemicals. This event shows that we are
living in worlds we have ‘desperately’ created and tried to maintain; worlds we
do not allow random uncontrolled events to ruin. Jack cannot accept it; we see
it in his indifferent actions. We are ever concerned with our survival, as well
as any events that bear resemblance to clouds, either mushroom clouds or
volcanic eruptions. We live in the relative safety of our houses and cannot
bear to accept change.
Don DeLillo captures our interest in
White Noise through the use of descriptive language, though rarely entering the
magical realism realm; instead focusing on real objects of everyday life. Even
from this passage, which recurs near the end of the novel, we can see that the
vivid images of a frustrated, ‘exploring’ man really comes through.
‘I
went home and started throwing things away. I threw away fishing lures, dead
tennis balls, torn luggage… The more things I threw away, the more I found. The
house was a sepia maze of old and tired things.’
In another passage: ‘I went after the padded clothes
hangers, the magnetic memo clipboards. I was in a vengeful and near savage
state… I was working the bathrooms, discarding used bars of soap, damp towels,
shampoo bottles with streaked labels and missing caps.’
Describing the main character’s new
obsession of throwing old stuff out signifies a change in his thought; the
actions are brought about by being told of his 30 year limitation to live. His
sudden focus-shift brought about by doctors and engineers of computer health
machines causes this action. Even the descriptions of himself are realistic: ‘…
slowly focused on a familiar object. It was Wilder, standing two feet from the
bed, gazing into my face. We spent a long moment in mutual contemplation.’ The
description of children as tender and kind beings is achieved by using words including
‘gazing’, ‘familiar object’, and ‘mutual contemplation’.
Dialogue used in White Noise convey
the thoughts and feelings of the characters as they engage in conversation.
Their pauses, views of the scene, (in particular the sunset that is miraculous
ever since the poisonous cloud,) is effortlessly engaging, although the
characters rarely ever come to conclusions or tell Jack what he wants to hear.
His university colleague, Murray mentions ‘That’s what it all comes down to in
the end,’ he said. ‘A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people.
How does he say good-bye to himself?’ as they part after their long walk. Random
sentences are inserted at the end of long chapters: ‘A woman passing on the
street said, “a decongestant, an antihistamine, a cough suppressant, a pain
reliever.”’ In other passages, DeLillo uses ‘The voice from above said…’ quite
randomly to signify noise. The voice is actually from a television set that is
upstairs as mentioned in the occasional ‘The TV upstairs said…’ Jack’s son
Heinrich is also a character who takes death openly and answers a question
about visiting his mother as: ‘Who knows what I want to do or anyone wants to
do?... Isn’t it all a question of brain chemistry… 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 misfire.’Who would answer questions in such a fashion?
Some answers are provided within the dialogues, through a character, Winnie
Richards. Her advice is to make ‘death seem less strange and unreferenced so
that your sense of self in relation to death will diminish along with your
fear.’
White noise, or Panasonic, is just
noise in general, some created electronically, others from real people. The
company Panasonic states that their word is created from ‘Pan’ and ‘Sonic’
meaning ‘bringing sound our Company creates to the world.’ There is an element
of overwhelming the world with sound, something which may be happening now,
with or without ‘Panasonic’ itself. The founder of the company, Matsushita,
even showed anger at the decision to unify the ‘Matsushita Electric’ brand into
Panasonic, leading to the National brand being used up until around 2008 within
Japan only. Initially, my interest in this book grew from reading a passage
DeLillo wrote about Heat. This single word was stated in the beginning, and he
then went on to elaborate about the cities and the buses, the people, something
which I related to well enough due to his vivid description. Then I learned
that he had originally wanted to name his book ‘Panasonic’ but couldn’t do so.
Although the content never went near to the company itself, it was his
descriptive language, his plot filled with seemingly unimportant events and
major disasters, his dialogue that seemed to lead to somewhere but then dropped
off, that truly kept my attention.
For anyone who wants to read and
think about death through curious, funny, and original texts with a family type
background, this book would be a suitable choice. Personally, the many
philosophical discussions, mainly involving Jack and another character were the
most intriguing. Jack’s quote ‘All plots tend to move deathward’ seemed to
reflect the novel itself, but was not spoken after deep thought on Jack’s part.Other
memorable terms include Waves and Radiation, Airborne Toxic Event, and
Dylarama. Each of them are titles for sections of the novel. No one tries to
bother with symbolism and psychic data; there is no need for observing ‘Energy
waves, incident radiation’. We should ‘take things for what it is, with clear
vision; no awe or terror.’ This should be the case for death as well. Events of
risking death can also dramatically alter perspectives like Wilder did in the
epilogue. What Wilder (the youngest son of Jack) does is cross the highway on a
tricycle showing no fear whatsoever. Jack then mentions how he visits the site
of the crossing regularly with his wife and Wilder to observe sunsets. Jack
also stops taking calls from his doctor. It seems that he is no longer afraid
of death. In the novel at least, the troubles are all resolved and we walk away
with a lasting impression of the importance of calm and of ourselves in the
life we live.
N.N.
Tuesday, 29 November 2016
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