You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide

You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide

Death is probably the most feared word in the English language. Its undesired certainty threatens society’s desire to believe that humanity is infinite. However, postmodernity treats this idea with no sympathy and exploits definition of mortality as seen in today’s industrial world. Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise tells the bizarre story of how Jack Gladney and his mixed family illustrate the postmodern ideas of religion, death, and popular culture. The theme of death’s uncanny influence over the character mentality, lavish consumer lifestyle, and ultimately media manipulation is one prevalent throughout DeLillo’s masterpiece.

Perhaps, the character most responsive to death is Jack Gladney. In fact, he is so clearly consumed by his fear of death that his ordinary thought processes are often interrupted by notions of the unknown and haunted by the question: “Who will die first” (DeLillo 15)? In Jack’s mind: “This question comes up from time to time, like where are the car keys” (DeLillo 15). Jack finds the aura of death to be visibly realistic, and he relies on consumerism as an escape from his torment.

Jack uses the supermarket as his sanctuary of consumerism and escapism, which is validated by the interpretation of his friend and colleague Murray Siskind. Murray views the supermarket as a nirvana, an atmosphere radiating immortality.

It’s full of psychic data….Everything is concealed in symbolism, hidden by veils of mystery and layers of cultural material…The large doors slide open, they close unbidden….All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering, rearranging, peeling off the layers of unspeakability…. We don’t have to cling to life artificially, or to death for that matter. We simply walk toward the sliding doors. Waves and radiation. Look how well-lighted the place is. The place is sealed off, self-contained…. It is timeless…. Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think (DeLillo 37-38).

John N. Duvall, author of “The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo’s White Noise,” believes that “Murray’s interpretations become Jack’s convictions; Murray’s speculations, Jack’s experiences” (143). Drawing on Murray’s prophecy, Jack embraces Murray’s analysis as a conviction and relies on the supermarket as a form of security, a place where colors and names remain consistently located, a place where he can ultimately elude death.

Jack also uses credit as a form of escapism through consumerism. After one random instance of dwelling on death, he sputters the words: “MasterCard, Visa, American Express” (DeLillo 100). Duvall notes that “forms of credit…are crucial to Jack’s function as a consumer,” and Jack represses death by thinking of it in terms of credit: a solution to delaying payment (136).

Furthermore, Jack uses his credit to create a sense of power and dominance over mortality.

I sent clerks into their fabric books and pattern books to search for elusive designs. I began to grow in value and self-regard. I filled myself out, found new aspects of myself, located a person I’d forgotten existed….The more money I spent, the less important it seemed. I was bigger than these sums (DeLillo 83-84).

According to Mark Conroy, author of “From Tombstone to Tabloid: Authority Figured in White Noise,” this illustrates “what one could call DeLillo’s Law of Consumption: that people expend money in direct proportion to their fear of death or dishonor” (102). Again, Jack would repress the idea of death through shopping by purchasing items that gave him a fresh, new appeal; one that death would not seek so readily because of its newness.

Likewise, DeLillo’s postmodern ideals represent the idea of novelty through mediation. During the terror of the “black, billowing cloud,” (or airborne toxic event) a man holding a television with a blank screen complains of the lack of media coverage on the event.

“No film footage, no live report. Does this kind of thing happen so often that nobody cares anymore? Don’t those people know what we’ve been through…? Is it possible nobody gives substantial coverage to such a thing? Half a minute, twenty seconds…? Are they so bored by spills and contaminations and wastes? Do they think this is just television…? Don’t they know it’s real”

(DeLillo 161-162)?

The absence of mediation hinders immediate terror, temporarily making the episode seem slightly insignificant, and “because the evacuees are attuned