The Family As Seen in White Noise by Don DeLillo - Essay Example

The Family As Seen in White Noise by Don DeLillo The family, in DeLillo’s White Noise, has been alluded to as dysfunctional. The family strays away from the traditional family values. The onslaught of the media and the large amount of information readily available to all family members has dulled the senses of the family members. This has led to the reversed roles between the parents and children. The once solid core of mother, father and children are replaced by a unit of ex-spouses, siblings and step-siblings, a situation brought about by divorce. Jack Gladney, a professor at a local college in Blacksmith, has four children; Mary Alice (aged 19) and Steffie (9), from his first and second marriages to Dana Breed-love; Bee (12), from his marriage to Tweedy Browner and Heinrich (14), from his marriage to Janet Savory (now known as Mother Devi). Of all his children, only Heinrich and Steffie live with him. His wife Babette’s three children are Denis (age 11), Eugene (8), and Wilder (about 2). Blacksmith has been negatively affected by this condition of the family. Blacksmith holds testimony to failed marriages (DeLillo 59). Things change so rapidly that even the family members seem unclear on the details. Jack even refers to family as the “cradle of the world’s misinformation” (DeLillo 81). In White Noise, DeLillo shows how technology is changing the inner experience of human beings, through waves and radiation. Television serves as a type of new collective unconscious that creates an inner frame of reference to which the mind unconsciously turns. The television has become a member of the family. Stephie murmurs "Toyota Celica" in her sleep. At one point, Jack says, “His skin was a color that I want to call, flesh-toned.” We are moving toward a postmodern mentality. The media and tabloids surrounding Jack Gladney’s life feeds on destroying lives, and this serves to further increase Jack Gladney’s obsession with death. This is an attitude that many Americans hold. The Gladney family is a true representation of a typical dysfunctional family of the post-1970s era. The need for instant gratification, coupled with over-consumption, fills the Gladney’s with a misguided sense on the middle class values. As a whole, the family members can not handle their emotions and are unable to think for themselves. Money has gained colossal meaning in our time. This has led to a devaluing of other values such as freedom, customer choice and respect for shoppers. DeLillo illustrates how the current world of commerce impacts our minds by manipulating our decisions. He goes further to illustrate that a human nature demonstrates immense vulnerability to such an attack. Ubiquitous commercials lead us to desire to have things we never tried before, to see things not worth seeing, to buy stuff we do not need. The novelist tries to open our eyes to identify and understand how this commercial destructive mechanism works. For instance, in one of the earlier scenes in the novel there is a picture of the family eating lunch. DeLillo focuses our attention on how the food on the table has been packaged: crumpled tinfoil, open cartons, bowl of past substances covered with plastic wrap, flip-to rings and twist ties and shiny bags of potato chips (DeLillo 7). Babette, Jack’s current wife, is a typical example of someone who gets attracted to shiny packages with bold, visible fonts, promising the good taste of the products. She is a perfect target for offensive commercials from the television, shopping malls and advertisements. She does not read the warning tags and shows a lack of interest in calorie values. In another incident, Jack, in a bid to regain his “lost” authority, takes his whole family to the Mid-Village Mall. They spent hours there, and it is the only time in the whole novel where the members of the family appear to be having a good time. They seem to be happy and satisfied. Jack later admits, “My family gloried in the event.” Jack surrenders to true shopping fever and ends up buying things he had no intention of buying. He goes further to tell his children to pick out their Christmas presents, even thought the event is still far off. The family spends hours passing endless boutiques, department stores, whole stores with countless floors, just to satisfy the seductive desire to replace money for goods. Jack says as he spends more and more money, the less important it (the money) seemed” (DeLillo 84). They drove home in silence, tired, filled with inner emptiness and consumed by selfishness. The family has been together by consumerism. This usually fails for instance when they watch television together. DeLillo points out that at least the family comes together by feeding their consumerist urges. In an attempt to ward off death, DeLillo explores the American impulse of buying in order to belong to a group. As much as consumerism seems to create a sense of belonging among individuals, it amasses its own waste, ultimately leaving people feeling empty. For instance, after their day-long shopping spree, the Jack and his family still left feeling empty. DeLillo goes further to question how much control we have over our own brains. One of Dylar’s side effects is the user confuses language with reality. This suggests that we are nothing without these processes and that a drug can overtake our senses and construct reality for us. Dylar does indeed create a new sense of reality by preventing the fear of death. Babette goes on to explain that the drug, Dylar, interacts with neurotransmitters in the brain, related to the fear of death (DeLillo 200). Parenthood is diffused in the Gladney family; no single child is biologically from both Babette and Jack. The roles of parents and children have been. Ideally, children idolize their parents because parents represent a future for their children. This traditional idolization of parents by children is a natural, healthy occurrence. On the other hand, in White Noise, the child represents the parent’s past, something to which he or she can never return. This form of idolization is inherently unsound. For instance, Jack and Babette are captivated by Wilder's innocence in relation to the ever-changing world. This innocence once lost can never be regained (DeLillo 158). White Noise is jam-packed with examples of the children’s continual dissolution of parental authority and the infantilization of their parents. On one hand, the children pay little regard to the authority traditional families place upon the parents. On the other hand, the parents do not exercise any amount of authority. Jack is so disillusioned that he refuses to see his family as being dysfunctional. Throughout the novel, DeLillo destabilizes the roles of the parents and the child. The parent is as a representation of the child and the child as a representation of the parent. In “Waves of Radiation” both Steffie and Denise are seen as authority figures. They chastise Babette for smoking, chewing gum, for not consuming the yoghurt that she buys. Denise begins and leads the investigation of her mother’s mysterious drug habit. Jack, like a boy who might defend his sister from chastisement by their parents, is forced to defend his wife against his step-daughter (DeLillo 7). Jack’s relationship with his fourteen-year-old son, Heinrich, is another representation of the subversion of the parent/child dynamic. Heinrich argues with his father against the existence of rain on the car windshield saying that our senses are more often wrong than they are right. There are many theories that say nothing is what it seems. There is no past, present or future outside your own mind. The so-called laws of motion are a big hoax. Even sound can be tricky (DeLillo 23). DeLillo reveals Jack’s frustration at not being able to inculcate a part of himself in his son, therefore, evading his mortality and fear of death. Instead of this connection, DeLillo presents a battle of wits, a battle which the father eventually loses. The family hilariously handles facts. Their conversations too suggest the consequences of having lived in a high-technology society. Despite the abundant information available everywhere, nobody seems to know anything. The family gorges itself with disposable information. Thus, DeLillo, in his novel White Noise tackles the results of a consumerist attitude as well as the effects of the information age on the family. The author has pointed out the negative effects this development in society has had on the family. Works Cited “Death and the Subverted Family Dynamic in Don DeLillo’s White Noise” www.paulbarrett.net 02 May 2013 “White Noise, Introduction by Mark Osteen” www.e-reading-lib.org 02 May 2013 Read More