Generally speaking, the characters’ lives in White Noise are structured around the effort to shield themselves in an artificial paradise of shopping and other entertainment. Though the Lacanian notion of the real entails that there will be disruptions of such living, capitalism threatens to eradicate any potential subversion by becoming identical with drive (Žižek, Parallax 61). As drive is located nearly in the dimension of the real, as opposed to desire, which is enthralled in the dimension of symbolic, it regulates according to all the monstrous properties of the real (Kay 162). It follows that capitalism becomes the greatest subversion that overthrows and then homogenizes other subversions that are less focused and amassed. Instead of dawning on him about the lack in the Other, Jack’s failures to become a successful father, husband and even professor only cause him to turn more thoroughly to the exchanges of money and goods. Though the air borne toxic event seems to shatter the false security enjoyed by the townspeople, the business world depicted by DeLillo is even capable of turning the crisis as a surplus of its development into chances for further development. With such liveliness, the capitalist machines intensify the cycle to shop and enjoy for townspeople. Under the circumstance, only fear of death reminds them of the limit of their enjoyment. The “modern death” possesses Jack Gladney so that he finally breaks out of the impasse ushered by the capitalist
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infiltration (DeLillo 144). Death thus plays the role of real that shatters the existing social order despite some reservations for Jack’s morality.
For Lacan, the identity of the subject can never be complete because the Other is always lacking in providing a scenario that can fully explain the subject’s existence.
Thus, Paul Newman says:
For Lacan, . . . the identity of the subject is always incomplete. The symbolization of
the subject—its self-recognition in the symbolic order—ultimately fails, and
therefore, there is always a structural gap between the subject and the signifier that is
supposed to represent him. (Newman 57)
When the subject finds out what he is is not quite matched with the position the system offers, the result is a traumatic feeling (Žižek, How 42). Jack is aware all the time that his identity as the founder of Hitler study is but a constructed myth. On the one hand, he derives a certain amount of sense of security in absorbing a powerful figure and constructing an image of a prominent academic. On the other hand, he is aware that he is, in his own words, “the false character that follows the name around”
(DeLillo 17). In the beginning of the novel, Jack accounts for how he becomes the renowned scholar back to 1968. But the success is mostly opportunistic (DeLillo 4).
Jack is fortunate enough to have a trusting dean that accepts his advice to establish the reputation of College on the Hill on an innovative subject of study (DeLillo 4). The
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idea works and Jack is esteemed as the first scholar between the Atlantic renown for the cultural study of Hitler phenomenon (DeLillo 4). The most scandalous fact concerning Jack’s eminent position is that he doesn’t understand German, let alone reading and writing in German (DeLillo 30). Jack has been living for many years, so to speak, “on the edge of a landscape of vast shame,” that is, in the fear that his unsound scholarship would someday be exposed (DeLillo 30). Besides, Jack reveals to Babette how they rely on appearance shaping for winning others’ recognition.
Simply named as “Jack Gladney” would not be “taken seriously as a Hitler innovator”
(DeLillo 16). The chancellor and Jack conclude that some “extra initial” should be inserted between his first name and last name (DeLillo 16). Following that, the chancellor urges Jack to obtain more “bulk” (DeLillo 17). The “bulk” that Jack finds reassuring in Babette is now used for creating “an air of unhealthy excess, of padding and exaggeration, hulking massiveness” in his appearance (DeLillo 17). The point is that, by appearing intimidating, Jack is able to “‘grow out’ into Hitler,” that is, conforming to the public expectation of an authoritative figure studying another powerful, evil and deadly figure (DeLillo 16). In order to further enhance the fascination Jack might entice from the public, he constantly wears dark glasses (DeLillo 32). But Jack is not very sure about the destination he is heading toward.
Most efforts, for Jack, are “tentative” (DeLillo 17). They are used to form a career and,
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most importantly, a public image that might stabilize his sense of self. Hitler is just a thing for Jack “to grow into and develop toward” (DeLillo 17). While it does become an instant success and Babette assures Jack that the initials “J. A. K.” does lend
“dignity, significance and prestige” to him, Jack is all the while troubled by a keen sense of alienation to the public image that he so painstakingly constructed (DeLillo 17).
When one of Jack’s colleagues remarks that he doesn’t look formidable without the medieval cloak and dark glass, the sense that he is but an ordinary guy drives him to shop in a desperate way. When the Gladneys arrive at the Mid-Village Mall for shopping, Jack runs into a faculty of College on the Hill named Eric Massingale, who remarks that Jack looks “so harmless” without his dark glasses and medieval cloak (DeLillo 83). In the previous chapters, Jack reveals how he relies on his dark glasses and gown to form a scholar image. For the students, his gown represents his status as the dean of the department and contributes to his confidence in lecturing (DeLillo 9 and 26). His dark glass is selected to add a formidable air to himself, replacing the “bushy beards” that his “wife of the period” dislikes (DeLillo 17). Overall, Jack’s gown and glasses are indispensible for constructing a powerful figure in the others’ eyes. But, the intended effect means a lot more to himself than to others. Being discovered as just a “big, harmless, aging, indistinct sort of guy,” Jack
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begins to shop “with reckless abandon” (DeLillo 83) Massingale’s remarks “put [Jack]
in the mood to shop” because shopping remedies his feeling of shame (DeLillo 83). It is too painful to be recognized as another ordinary guy, his feigning being rendered futile.
Not only does Jack fail to live up to the position of professor, his status as a husband and a father are not consolidate. As a husband, Jack prides himself for being able to maintain the relationship via sincerity and communication before he finds out Dylar (DeLillo 29). They develop a habit to tell each other things that have happened to them down to the smallest detail (DeLillo 30). According to Jack, it “helps us develop an identity secure enough to allow itself to be placed in another’s care and protection” (DeLillo 29). In other words, through being open to each other, Jack establishes with his spouse a firm relationship that is used to define himself. This identity will disintegrate if one of them dies before the other because it suggests the end of the “two views of the same person” (DeLillo 99). Between the end of the identity and the present, Jack is content to perceive that their job is to protect each other from any harm. Thus, Babette observes that it is Jack’s nature “to shelter loved ones from the truth” after Jack defends Babette for her compulsive shopping (DeLillo 8). However, after he learns that Babette ever sleeps with another man in exchange for the drugs to eliminate her fear of death, he realizes that their sincerity is only a fake. It
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is vital that they talk to each other about everything but leave their fear of death out (DeLillo 29-30). Though Jack and Babette discuss about who should die first, they never really confront the abyss of fear together. In their striving for the priority to die in order to leave the loneliness to the other, both try to conceal the fact that they don’t want to die at all (DeLillo 101, 188). Once the fear is found to be simply “too big” to be contained in Babette’s confession, Jack is devastated (DeLillo 188).
Most importantly, the revelation strikes especially hard when it destroys Jack’s self image that is constructed as a protector. Jack always conceives of himself as “the doomed fool” who is brooded alone by his fear of death; he is the one who is supposed to take the suffering in silently and to “protect you from worry,” “to keep you animated, vital and happy” (DeLillo 188). Playing a tragic hero, he is able to mesmerize himself with the “simple pleasures” Babette’s daily routines bring to him (DeLillo 189). Death can be kept at bay with this imaginary gesture of sacrifice. Now that Babette not only is found to fear death excessively but also bypasses Jack’s assumed identity of protector, Jack’s self perception in relation to Babette is seriously shattered. Therefore, Jack’s identity as a husband is also evanescent.
As a father, he is panicked by his grown up children also because of this tension between position and substance. When his precocious daughter Bee visits the Gladneys, Jack is greatly panicked by her gaze, which seems to indicate how
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immature he is. Although Bee is but twelve years old, she is quite an independent child who, from nine onward, has been travelling around the world by herself (DeLillo 92-3). She can make Korean food while Steffie can only bake her toast (DeLillo 96). She wants to be a travel writer and does sharpen her mind while living in different countries; even her mother relies on her insight (DeLillo 88). When Bee comes to stay with the Gladneys for a few days, Jack is troubled from time to time by her gaze which seems to indicate their immaturity. With Bee around, the Gladneys begin “to see [them]selves 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” (DeLillo 94). Bee “seem[s] to radiate a surgical light,” “calling the very meaning of our lives into question” in her silent observation of the Gladneys’ shortcomings (DeLillo 94).
The most dangerous aspect of Bee, however, is how she can remind him of the impossibility of his identity. In their first serious conversation, Jack cannot stand Bee’s insight on her mother because it serves as a mirror reflecting Jack’s own problem. Before the arrival of Bee, DeLillo has first introduced to the reader Tweedy in the previous chapter. In it, Tweedy is portrayed as an agitated woman who is unsatisfied with her present life and now tries to seduce Jack into liaison with her, in hope of regaining the well being she once lost with him (DeLillo 86). She attributes
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the reason of her unhappiness to her often-absent husband, Malcolm, who is also a secret agent (DeLillo 87). Yet, according to Bee, the most fundamental problem lies not in the other but in Tweedy herself because “she doesn’t know who she is”
(DeLillo 95). In Bee’s perspective, Malcolm loves jungle and that’s why he is always there (DeLillo 95). Similarly, Babette can enjoy the life of a housewife (DeLillo 95).
Yet, for Tweedy, a kitchen is “a weird symbol of getting through a crisis, except she hasn’t gotten through it” (DeLillo 95). Despite countless effort to equip the kitchen, Tweedy just can’t be at ease there. The tragedy of Tweedy is explicit: she hurries into another marriage only to find out that she doesn’t want that life, either. The insight resonates deeply in Jack so that Jack eyes Bee with suspicion. Who is he? What does he do “for fun?” (DeLillo 96). Under her penetrating eyes, Jack wonders, “what was there to find out” about him? (DeLillo 96) She might have known something about him that he doesn’t want others to know. Bee’s eyes start to suggest “hidden implications,” searching for clues to “have her suspicions confirmed” (DeLillo 95).
Her insightful remarks on her mother deepen Jack’s fear of his daughter, suggesting that what Jack is really afraid of is that his vulnerability will be exposed by her someday. All he can do now is to try to change a topic (DeLillo 96).
In another dialogue with his son, Heinrich, Jack is also deeply unsettled by Heinrich’s explosive remarks demonstrating that it is impossible to be certain about
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what one really wants. The conversation begins as Jack notices that Heinrich is playing chess with a murderer in jail (DeLillo 43). Restraining his worry, Jack then learns the details of the murder half from Heinrich, half from his media-based knowledge of this stereotypical case, confirmed by Heinrich (DeLillo 44-5). Near the end of it, Jack mentions that Heinrich’s mother, Janet, who spends her life in a religious basement, might be concerned about this correspondence (DeLillo 45).
Armed with adolescent explosiveness, Heinrich is then prepared to fight against what he thinks as parental prejudice. When Jack asks Heinrich whether he wants to visit his mother during the summer vacation, this question unexpectedly ignites the bomb.
Heinrich asks a long serious of questions that aims at demonstrating the absurdity of asking about one’s intention. Well educated in biological chemistry, Heinrich sees that human decision is determined by some electrical reaction in the brain. “How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain?” (DeLillo 45) The reaction is so subtle and yet important that one can’t never be sure about one’s intention even in a short time period, let alone what has to be done ten months after. The most important lesson is thus that one can’t really control one’s intention. “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” (DeLillo 45). In other words, one’s decision is so impulsive and
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contingent that it is foolish to be sure about one’s intention. The primacy of chemical reaction in the brain gives ground to the possibilities that might turn the whole plan around due to some “misfire” in the neuron (DeLillo 46). The case of the random killer is then borrowed as a proof at hand (DeLillo 46). It seems that this kind of violence has been so hard to explain that it has to be seen as resulting from some mistake happening in one’s brain. Thus, Heinrich’s fiery protest touches upon the impossibility of knowing one’s authentic desire. For an accomplished middle age man, what more can he desire so as to release him from the feeling of emptiness? After Heinrich finishes his speech, there is a blank in the page suggesting how traumatic the question of authentic desire is for Jack’s psyche (DeLillo 46).
In a Lacanian vein, Jack is able to feel at ease with his life, despite unsatisfactory trivials and the fact that he doesn’t know what he really wants, because of the phantasmatic support of money. For Žižek, to be overly specific about what one really wants arouses the greatest existential anxiety because one can never be sure about the exact object that explains away the eternal feeling of unsatisfaction (Žižek, How 42). But fantasy shields a subject from confronting this ontological imperfection
by telling him how to salvage a lost fulfillment that promises an encounter with the object (Stavrakakis 46). Since fantasy “is an imaginary involved in a signifying function,” Jack’s existential crisis receives a temporary treatment from connecting
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with the symbolic world in his imaginary dimension (Stavrakakis 46). Shortly after his conversation with Heinrich, Jack tells the reader that he goes to check his ATM account. The number on the screen actually restores to him the lost confidence. The amount of his money signifies his “independent estimate,” and the abstract system does provide some “personal value,” which is “authenticated and confirmed” via his interaction with it (DeLillo 46). He is suddenly aware of the fact that his existence is anchored to this capitalist system. It is this “system” that “blessed [his] life” and lends him “support and approval” (DeLillo 46). In other words, it is money that tells him who he is. But for the recognition provided by the “system,” he would not be able to sustain his sense of self. Thus, when Jack spots a lunatic escorted by armed guards, he appreciates the “system” more; the sight before him is equivalent of “the networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies” (DeLillo 46). In this way, Jack re-immerses in his fantasy for the world in which everything has its place based on the rules of symbolic exchanges.
Fantasy, for Lacan, refers to the subject’s necessary attempt to conceal the lack of complete identity, jouissance, and complete Other by structuring how one should desire (Starvrakakis 42). In this respect, desire helps one to escape from the traumatic point in one’s subjectivity, belonging to the realm of fantasy. As Fink explains, desire
“is the continual displacement of the ever-same structural lack or split” (Fink, Letter
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22). To be more specific, desire denotes the ongoing deferrals of confronting the subject’s “want of being” (Evans 239). The implication for Jack’s example is that not knowing what one really is and wants lies at the heart of the system that measures a person by what he or she has. In this case, Jack’s achievement, accumulation of commodities and money constitute his fantasy that sustains his sense of self from falling apart.
This appropriation of the real, however, invites constant subversions from accidents or other source of traumatic impacts as a constant tension between the real and reality (Žižek, Looking 23). As Jack sticks to his fantasy that the society is constructed as a harmonious whole (Žižek, Sublime 126), the outbreak of air borne toxic event unsettles his thinking. When facing the emergency brought by the spillage of toxic substance near their house, Jack emphasizes how being a professor can be immune to this kind of catastrophe:
These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in
such a way that it’s the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of
natural and man-made disasters . . . . I am a college professor. Did you ever see a
college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods?
(DeLillo 112)
Jack thus conceives the society as a simple hierarchy in which the superior position he
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occupies shall protect him from any danger while it’s natural for the people who occupies the lower part to suffer accidents and harm. However, the later development of events proves that he is wrong: even though he is a professor, he is still infected by the deadly chemical, demonstrating the shattering of fantasy by the intrusion of the real (DeLillo 134). The strict division among people is thus a fantasy that is supported by class antagonism and protects himself from the lack in his identity. That is, even being a professor does not guarantee the ultimate satisfaction secured from death.
The concept of simple hierarchy, still, is inherent in his enjoyment of shopping, suggesting the phantasmatic nature of consumerism. To be more specific, Jack’s enjoyment in shopping is structured around the lack of enjoyment of “the poor.” In the
The concept of simple hierarchy, still, is inherent in his enjoyment of shopping, suggesting the phantasmatic nature of consumerism. To be more specific, Jack’s enjoyment in shopping is structured around the lack of enjoyment of “the poor.” In the