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quote

“I do want to die first,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid. I’m terribly afraid. I’m afraid all the time.”

“I’ve been afraid for more than half my life.”

“What do you want me to say? Your fear is older and wiser than mine?”

“I wake up sweating. I break out in killer sweats.”

“I chew gum because my throat constricts.”

“I have no body. I’m only a mind or a self, alone in a vast space.”

“I seize up,” she said.

“I’m too weak to move. I lack all sense of resolve, determination.”

“I thought about my mother dying.  Then she died.”

“I think about everyone dying. Not just myself. I lapse into terrible reveries.”

“I felt so guilty. I thought her death was connected to my thinking about it. I feel the same way about my own death. The more I think about it, the sooner it will happen.”

“How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn’t they paralyze us?  How is it we can survive them, at least for a while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were,  last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise.”  

“What if death is nothing but sound?”

“Electrical noise.”

“You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful.”

“Uniform, white.”

“Sometimes it sweeps over me,” she said. “Sometimes it insinuates itself into my mind, little by little. I try to talk to it. ‘Not now Death.’” 

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“sometimes it insinuates itself into my mind, little by little. i try to talk to it. ‘not now death.’”

In Babette’s opinion, death is controllable; however it is the exact opposite: Babette’s fear of death is controlling her. Instead of purely fearing death, like Jack, Babette attempts to tackle it. She takes medication, she even tries to “talk to it.” Babette’s interaction with death is unique from other characters. She does anything and everything she could in order to prevent her greatest fear from coming true. She takes action, yet she hid her fear– bottled it up, quite literally in a vial of pills. The same logic of controlling death applies to the passing of her mother: “‘I thought about my mother dying. Then she died”’ (DeLillo 188). Babette’s mother did not die because Babette thought about it, yet she blames herself for the loss of her mother.

Babette is willing to do just about anything in order to avoid dying, sleeping with another man, for example. Death ruins her relationship with her husband, causing her to conceal her emotions around him. She forgets details and memories because of the memory loss effects of the unfaithful-medication, Dylar. Babette’s fear of death is causing her life to fall to shambles. Applying science to the interaction between Babette and the Dylar medication provides a different take. The purpose of Dylar was to block the neurotransmitters that process fear in the brain. Those neurotransmitters exist in the amygdala, the part of the brain in which the primary purpose is to process fear and prepare for fight-or-flight. A professor of psychology at Penn State University stated during her PSYCH 100 class: “While removing the amygdala would block fear, it would also cause you to have no fear. A person without an amygdala would not fear being hit by a car while walking across a four lane highway.” The contrast between the fear of death controlling life and having no fear at all is something Babette battles with everyday. It’s not a this-or-that option; there’s a balance between the two. Fearing death is rational– it is unknown, but blocking out fear entirely has catastrophic consequences.

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“you hear it forever. sound all around. how awful.”

Technology, such as televisions and radios, are used by DeLillo as a device to interrupt the storyline and dig on the postmodern lifestyle’s dependency on stimulation, which is evident throughout Jack’s interactions with the sounds throughout the novel. White Noise is constantly interrupted by voices from the television discussing surgery and pottery, radio commercials, and household sounds such as blue jeans tumbling in the dryer. The mentioning of these sounds interrupt the general flow of the storyline– they are always heard by the characters but never truly connect to the immediate plotline of the novel. The waves of sound travel throughout the household as background noise to the more prominent events that are occurring, however Jack begins to acknowledge, even personify, the technology that fills the remaining time of the day with sound. Jack becomes dependent on the sounds. Every spare second of his life is filled with noise, and he fears that death would lack any form of stimulation from noise other than a uniform white sound. In a conversation between Jack and Murray, Murray perfectly sums up the effects of sound and stimulation in an American home:

‘“Waves and radiation,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to understand that the medium is a primal force in the American home. Sealed-off, timeless, self-referring. It’s like a myth being born right there in our living room, like something we know in a dreamlike and preconscious way’” (DeLillo 51).

Sounds are ubiquitous in Jack’s American household. He perfects succumbs to the stigma of a postmodern lifestyle: his dependency of sound to carry him from one place to the next, from one conversation to the another. Sounds produced by technology are a constant in his ever changing lifestyle, as he travels from one marriage to another, or from a nighttime reading with Babette to a conversation with Heinrich. TV is ever present and constant in his life– always filling the silence.

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a shared disguise

Although DeLillo is hinting at a much more serious topic than The Parent Trap, the idea of other people having similar experiences to you, but lacking all knowledge of it, brought me immediately to The Parent Trap. Specifically, the scene where Annie and Haley are fencing but the masks are blocking their ability to recognize one another, just as Jack and Babette hiding their fear of dying from each other prevented them from realizing they were going through the same problems. The scene in The Parent Trap is clearly a much more literal interpretation of the emotions Jack and Babette are experiencing.

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fear

The idea of the overwhelming fear of death being contained within Jack and Babette reminded me of the character “Fear” from Inside Out. The question of how no one sees how afraid we are made me consider the other emotions in the movie. Fear cannot overwhelm the entire body without extreme consequences, other emotions need to balance it out, as they do in Inside Out. Although Fear is one of the five main categories of emotions in the movie, it is always balanced out by the other four. The pure fear reaction is never truly seen, it is disguised, muffled, by some combination of the other emotions.

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paralysis

Sleep paralysis perfectly combines the overwhelming fear with the reality of life. In my life, I’ve heard stories of people feeling hurt, trapped, or terrified while experiencing sleep paralysis. They are not necessarily paralyzed by fear as Jack is suggesting, but the rather the opposite. People are fearful because they are paralyzed. The inability to take action to stop the pain, due to paralysis, is what is terrifying. Death, referring to the physical body, is an everlasting lifeless body buried two meters into the ground. While the fear of death may be paralyzing, death itself is eternal paralysis.

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“we manage to function”

Each character in White Noise functions differently in their everyday life, despite their awareness of their predetermined fate of dying. Fear, specifically of death, is a prominent theme throughout White Noise. Jack’s connection to death is the most obvious and commonly mentioned, but as the novel progresses the reactions of other characters to death become more apparent. Babette turns to medication to deal with her fear, Heinrich depends on logic to understand death, Murray is fascinated by it, and Wilder is largely unaware that it exists. Each character has a different way that they “manage to function” (some more than others), and each has a different idea of what death truly is. Murray and Jack possess different feelings towards death: Jack fears it while Murray challenges it. During a conversation with Murray, Jack becomes frustrated by his inability to understand death (because anyone who does understand it is already dead). He questions this, asking “Why can’t we be intelligent about death?” (DeLillo 269). Unable to come to a concrete conclusion, for reasons aforementioned, he begins to blame himself: “It’s almost as though our fear is what brings it on. If we could learn not to be afraid, we could live forever” (270). This is similar to Babette’s belief that she caused her mother’s death by thinking about it too much and too often. The idea of “functioning” through the fear of death is nearly impossible for Jack to understand. While he does function, raising four kids, teaching college courses, the line between functioning and falling apart begins to blur. After screening a film for one of his Hitler classes, he blurts out “All plots tend to move deathward” but cannot seem to understand why (26). His inner thoughts ponder on why he said such a thing– did he believe what he had said? After that moment his thoughts on death become more frequent, more paranoid. He begins to spiral uncontrollably, overwhelmed by his fear of death. He can no longer manage to function.

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the anticipation of death

TWO SOURCES (COMBINED INTO ONE ANALYSIS): Not knowing what lies after death in undeniably stressful, but that stress can actually kill you. Thantophobia, or death anxiety, is the fear of the dying process and/or the fear of death altogether– a conscious fear of death. Babette isn’t too far off; her thinking about death (to an unhealthy extent) may cause it to occur sooner– not because she’s just thinking about it (she’s not a witch), but rather because she’s stressing about it. 

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In season 3 episode 20 of The Office, Michael Scott contemplates suicide because he is extremely stressed out, which he says caused him to fall into a depression. While this does not directly address living with an overwhelming fear of death, it does present a comedic example of when stress becomes (extremely) unhealthy. 

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the death of a mom

Although I hate to include a video that has a 100% chance of causing viewers to cry, there is not a single movie that will ever portray a mother’s death in a more tragic way than Bambi.

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killer sweats

Killer sweats brought to you by James McAvoy.

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when the gladneys think of death

When I Think of Death - Maya Angelou

When I think of death, and of late the idea has come with alarming frequency, I seem at peace with the idea that a day will dawn when I will no longer be among those living in this valley of strange humors. 

I can accept the idea of my own demise, but I am unable to accept the death of anyone else. 

I find it impossible to let a friend or relative go into that country of no return. 

Disbelief becomes my close companion, and anger follows in its wake.

I answer the heroic question 'Death, where is thy sting? ' with ' it is here in my heart and mind and memories.'

When I Think of Death by Maya Angelou perfectly encompasses the overwhelming thoughts of Babette (and Jack, since he also wants to die first). Not only does it comment on dying first, but it comments on the reason death is so intimidating to mortal human beings: “I answer the heroic question ‘Death, where is they sting?’ with ‘it is here in my heart and mind and memories’” (Angelou). Maya Angelou recognizes that the fear of death lies in the heart (fear of losing loved ones), mind (brain processing fear), and memories (how your time was spent). By being the first one to die, the fear of the heartbreak of losing a loved one is no longer a concern, but the other factors still exist, causing both Jack and Babette to fear death.

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honor affirmation

As a member of Moorestown Friends School, I affirm my honesty, academic integrity, and responsibility to the school community by neither giving nor receiving unpermitted aid during this assessment.

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works cited

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. Print.