Comparison and Contrast on Books by DeLillo: White Noise and Mao II - Essay Example

Titus Rock Manickam Order No. 188617 31 October 2007 Paper Comparison and Contrast on 2 books by DeLillo White Noise and Mao II White Noise People do not impress Don DeLillo, a crowd does. Demons do not horrify him, nonchalance does. Anyone having read DeLillo's novel, "White Noise" cannot escape the writer's penchant for a break from the chaotic situation the world is in today. What is worse is the apparent lack of concern. A situational analysis brings to fore the dynamics of crowd approach today. Want to scare the authorities into submission Use a crowd. Want to make an impression Follow the crowd. Want to throw the fear of God into the minds of the people Instigate the crowd. Indeed, every situation, no matter how difficult or cumbersome, has a solution, if one only knows how to crack the whip in a crowd. DeLillo has proved himself as an ace analyzer of crowd situations. Jack Gladney, an off-beat professor in the studies of Hitler at the College-on-the-Hill, is the main character of "White Noise." As much as he is grim and off-keyed, his wife and children are equally the odd combination of bizarre and blas. His wife, Babette, beset with a forgetful mind nurses an ever present premonition of death. Babette's addiction to a drug called Dylar finds her in dalliance with a certain shady Dr. Gray compromising with him her body for drugs, a situation which almost ends in murder. The sons, Heinrich, 14, glum and prone to doomsday anxieties, is a chip of the old block, while 3 years old Wilder is rather assuring and conspicuous by his presence. The daughters, Denise, 11, is a brat and will brook no nonsense from her parents, calling spade a spade, and Steffie, the younger sibling, is a sensitive child who cannot bear to see anyone suffer. It is a classical case of a family living inside a capsule inexorably hurtling towards sure doomsday. The family itself is a telling commentary of the society we live in today. The glum environment may well be the product of a blended marriage with the children having to bear the brunt of a forced step-relationship over which they have no control. The novel highlights the role of children in the scheme of things in the present world. They are more sober, more sensitive, and the target consumers for marauding marketers, reflectively symbolic of the novel's mock surprise towards anything natural and tendency towards more sensitivity and sobriety found among kids rather than the grown ups. Nonetheless, they are warned of the isolation and discomfiture that are sure to follow them soon, by professors at the college. DeLillo's novels have the uncanny effect of touching upon raw nerves. They delve into the not so distant past, hover over the present, and eerily strike at the future bang on target. Written in 1985 with an industrial disaster as background, the "White Noise" draws parallel with the Union Carbide tragedy in Bhopal in 1984, and attempts to rub some sensitivity into a nation benumbed with excessive materialism and prosperity. The United States' prominent world supremacy is akin to the arrogance of Hitler minus the despotic adventurism. Typically, responsibility and control can go to the computer programs. In the quest for comfort and an easy lifestyle, the increasing tendency to fulfill every wish at the press of a button is so pervasive that it is treated as an irritant if the situation turns out to be otherwise. With the Gladney family as the background, "White Noise" goes on to reach out and catch the big picture of the industrial accident and its consequent aftermath when the evacuation lasting nine days causes seemingly endless traffic snarls and panicky inhabitants taking whatever route and protection available to escape the doomed city. News of the impending disaster after the first tentative information about the leak instinctively thrust the population nonchalantly towards their favorite supermarkets. It is only after the death of a man during inspection, and a night of "airborne toxic event" that the magnitude of the disaster sinks in and the mass exodus for safer climes begins. Gladney is, however, nonchalant. He tells Murray, "I don't see myself fleeing an airborne toxic event. That's for people who live in mobile homes out in the scrubby parts of the county, where the fish hatcheries are." But eventually he too flees with his family. Finally, after nine days, when the situation is brought under control, the Gladneys return home. Gladney sets out for a diagnostic checkup only to be told of the presence of the toxic Nyolene D in his blood. His days are numbered. It may be a few days. It could go on for fifteen years! The oscillating extremes of individuals, society and a nation in total command and control at one point of time, and the same individuals, society and nation as victims of abject surrender to suspense and disorder in the next moment are denoted with striking clarity in "White Noise." Amidst the aura of consumerism and a "crowd-based" society, the novel includes the super markets as the other major player in the scheme of things. The sound of the expressway traffic, the increasing influence of the television in the lives of every individual, dishing out entertainment and commercials, "coke it is, coke it is," and the endless chants of the electronic and the print media reeling out information, entertainment and commercials, have all but completely eroded the chances for natural order to recover its moorings. Murray Siskind, a former sportswriter, and colleague and admirer of Gladney aptly sums up, ''Everything is concealed in symbolism. . . . The large doors slide open, they close unbidden. Energy waves, incident radiation . . . code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering. . . . Not that we would want to. . . . This is not Tibet. . . . Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. Dying is an art in Tibet." Nevertheless, the USA is not Tibet. According to "White Noise," in the present state of affairs, it is neither commendable nor feasible for USA or any other country in the world to emulate Tibet. The writings of DeLillo pose some ticklish questions on culture, survival and history. Culture and history have provided heroes, legends, myths, outlaws, villains, conquerors, victims, and a large data of examples and experience. However, they have not been able to caution or prevent mankind from painting himself into a corner, or saving him from an entanglement into his own web of exploitation and intrigue. In America, the plethora of gadgets and receptors and receivers are so pervasive that even in the times of death and destruction more importance is attached to the stereo, and computers and hair-dryers rather than the more life sustaining rudimentary consumables like food, water and medicines. The world is not a place for the one-man army anymore. Gone are the days when David felled Goliath or the resolute principles of Mahatma Gandhi stood up to the might of a world super power. The grim reality is that today one is either in the circle or out of it. Follow the crowd, there is more security in a crowd. The crowd is all powerful. As a symbol of authority, referring to the Nazi uniform, Gladney tells his daughter, " some people put on a uniform and feel bigger, stronger, safer.'' Even the mask of religion and nuns serve little purpose in the "White Noise" turn of events. Gladney is outright in his disdain for a nun who is equally forthright in her statement that her ilk's presence help Gladney believe or disbelieve. (1) Mao II First published in 1991, Don DeLillo's tenth novel, "Mao II" is yet another quintessential post modern literature which has a situation pulsating with crazed crowd culture deeply entrenched inside the world system today. And it is not only the crowd thronging a political square in support of a new radical ideology or the mass screaming for someone's blood in vendetta, but also the silent crowd of a mass matrimonial ceremony at the Yankee Stadium under the gaze of Reverend Moon. The maniac crowd is killing art, or so the writer seems to believe. There seems to be no respite from the crowd obsession in "Mao II." If the writer chose to paint the crowd as the ones calling the shots in "White Noise" in "Mao II" their presence takes on an ominous replacement of artists and writers as conscience awakeners of the world. "Mao II" revolves around a paranoid writer, Bill Gray, his assistant, Scott Martineau, Scott's partner, Karen, and a New York photographer named Brita. Unsuccessfully trying to complete a script he has been working at for over two decades, Bill seems unable to come to grips with his assumption that the role of writers in society no longer holds good as terrorists have supplanted the minds of people with their brazen acts of hijacking, explosions and wanton killings. DeLillo crafts the characters of Bill, Scott, Karen, and Brita to plot a situation which meanders from the simple drawing room of a distraught writer to the locales of London, Cyprus, Beirut, and other hysteric scenarios beamed through TV channels. Bill's condescending observation about his own as also his peers as "someone's material,' his stark uncertainty about his future as a writer, his floundering attempts at self-regeneration, and his dialogues with his fellow characters cast a pall of gloom in the background of a world gearing up to an impending takeover by a joint declaration of the crowd cults. Documenting writers, Brita offers Bill some reprieve from his colossal sense of futility and failure. He gives in to Brita's insistence on documenting his work, although his diatribe that the breed of writers is set to extinct debilitates everyone, most of all his own attempts at continuing as a novelist. After having successfully penned two novels, he desperately persists to complete his third, but finds himself mentally and emotionally drained. Ultimately, he abandons his manuscript and sneaks off to London to secure the release of a Swiss writer held hostage in Beirut. In London, Bill comes across George Haddad, a Maoist group representative connected to the Swiss writer's kidnapping, and decides to travel to Beirut to personally seek the Swiss' release. He makes it to Cyprus en route to Beirut, but his journey is cut short by an accident which results in his death. (2) Chairman Mao, the influence behind the story's title, dominates in the shadows, with his doctrines of the masses and cult imagery. The death of Ayatollah Khomeini, where the never ending crowd holds sway so that nothing else could be caught on camera, and the picture of Karen's own tryst with a mass marriage solemnized by Reverend Moon, give the crowd fixation its own identity in the realm of the modern nations and societies. Each character in "Mao II" has major setbacks which they find difficult to swallow, amidst a grim catch-22 situation. Bill expresses his enigma by disappearing, even faking suicide, sympathizing with fellow writers for their predicament as "someone's material," a commodity, whose future has become bleak with terrorists ensconced in the minds of the people who have lost their charm in reading of books to jolt their conscience. Bill has a good reason to disappear though, exemplifying Mao and "great leaders who regenerate their powers by dropping out of sight and staging messianic returns." Scott admits to his own failure in trying to keep track of Bill's manuscript which he knows has no reason to believe with see the light of day. Karen accepts her vulnerability in acceding to be married to "a photograph," an image that presented her with a "husband for eternity," and Brita makes a feeble attempt at exposing the crowd when she removes the hood of one boy in the gathering of a terrorist group and snaps his photograph. Pictures, TV relays, billboards form an important part of DeLillo's exposition. He even takes the liberty of squeezing in certain images without any rhyme or reason simply with the profound belief that the reader would comprehend the purpose of such unrelated imagery interjections. DeLillo's writings possess the finical flashes of grim realities of the present moment while incredibly latching on to unfolding events with considerable predictive accuracy. America began to feel the heat of bombings few years after "Mao II" was published in 1991 at the start of President Clinton's tenure. The predicament has only been rising with mid-air explosions, and acts of terrorism necessitating head on collision with Islamic fundamentalists and other terror outfits around the globe. (3) A Comparison of "White Noise" and "Mao II" DeLillo is adept at using the character of turncoats to make his point and rake up issues plaguing the modern world. In "White Noise" Professor Jack Gladney has his wife, children, Murray Siskind and the inevitable crowd to highlight issues dogging USA. In "Mao II" DeLillo has come a full circle. The "White Noise" crowd was inevitable given the nature of the industrial disaster and its consequent evacuation. In "Mao II" the crowd is there for a cause, and not the other way around. It is not the motley crowd fleeing a city on the throes of death, but a crowd in all solemnity for a cause, howsoever malevolent, but a cause, a cause for which it is not necessary to run away to save one's life, but a cause to die for or kill for. Chairman Mao, Ayatollah Khomeini, Reverend Moon, Abdul Rashid, Hitler and their ilk seem to be awakening crowds at different corners of the world in the most deleterious forms. Elsewhere, manmade empires and machinations capable of inflicting harmful, self-destructive and environmental damages, override the surface of the earth. Behind such portending scenario, DeLillo leaves open to debate the powerful influence of reason and intellect of the reader. The reader is aroused into a sense of insecurity and fear on reading "White Noise" and "Mao II" and enlightened enough to pose a challenge to the writer and the crowd. The aspect of an enlightened reader is lost in DeLillo's writings. In "White Noise" the fate of the main character, Jack Gladney, is sealed with the positive feedback of his diagnosis after the industrial accident and gas leak. But the reader is left to conclude Gladney's longevity which "could be a days or as long as fifteen years!" In "Mao II" the fate of the Swiss writer is left untold and without any ray of hope under damning circumstances. Brita's comments that information overload has numbed us all, and nothing seems to shake the readers except for "news of disaster" reinforces DeLillo's central theme of his novels that people are fearful in general and noncommittal and exploited in particular. "White Noise" provides a refreshing break with youngsters showing some credence as human beings and capable of taking initiatives on providing succor for animals as well as fellow beings. Such inspirational silver lining is conspicuous by its absence in "Mao II." The crowds are everywhere, bad crowd, ill-boding crowd, indifferent crowd; crowds of all sorts except the benevolent crowd. It is difficult to conclude whether the crowd obsession is DeLillo's forte or fallacy. Sources: 1. Philips, Jayne Anne, The New York Times, Book Review, www.nytimes.com/1985/01/13/books/delillo-noise.htmlpagewanted=print, 26 October 2007. 2. Mao II, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_II, 29 October 2007 3. Post Modern Elements of Don DeLillo's Mao II, associatedcontent.com/.../postmodern_elements_of_don_delillos.html, 29 October 2007. Read More