Depiction of Existential Crisis and Self-Discovery in the Novel 'White Noise'
Don DeLillo’s Americana, End Zone, and Falling Man all examine the search for self in the American novel. Although the motivations, backgrounds, and eventual outcomes of the characters from these novels may differ, all struggle against the same things: the postmodern ailments that have taken over American culture. The search for self in these novels is stunted by the fact that these protagonists are searching for a now-obsolete modernist form of self in a distinctly postmodern environment. Americana’s David Bell acts as a template for DeLillo’s later protagonists, as his pilgrimage out west and search for self sets the pattern for DeLillo’s later protagonists.
Falling Man continues to explore how terrorism affects the self; it also presents the reader with a possible alternative to DeLillo’s prototypical postmodern character looking for a modernist self, in the guise of Keith who seems more comfortable in postmodern space. Because of the postmodern elements in these novels, specifically a loss of origin due to what Baudrillard terms “simulacra,” each of the protagonists from these novels, excluding Keith, fails in their respective journeys towards self-discovery. Although Falling Man presents the reader with a deviation from the traditional pattern of a DeLillo protagonist, it is important to note that regression is not new to the works of Don DeLillo; rather what is significant about Falling Man is that each character actively pursues regression. Americana presents the reader with a narration marked by regression. DeLillo effectively concludes Americana with a continuous loop, as the narration implies that David Bell will always be watching, and adding to his autobiography without every coming to terms with his search for self. For David Bell there is no “out”; he will never find himself, and he will never have closure to his search.
The purpose of the novel White Noise is not to present the reader with a sense of hope for a better tomorrow; rather, it is to present the reader with a specific moment in the lives of its protagonists that is indicative of their struggle for self-discovery. What DeLillo is attempting to show is how the struggles in the novel are indicative of the struggles of everyday life. As the world changes, the novel changes, and what this three novel demonstrates is the growing impact of postmodern hindrances and war, as a general sense of a loss of origin and terrorism, have now become a daily facet of American life.
The choice of the supermarket is significant for Jack's ultimate transcendence. It is the trope of existence throughout the novel. Indeed, the supermarket scene in the closing chapter is mystically charged as a sacred space for personal transcendence.
The supermarket is the place where the 'White Noise' of the novel's title makes its most significant appearance. “And over it all,” Jack narrates as he stands in the shopping aisle listening to the supermarket’s ambient noise, “or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension.” This is an almost mystical observation by a highly attuned consciousness, reminiscent of a mystic on the brink of spiritual discovery. Murray, Jacks young colleague and the novel's spokesman of postmodernist ideas, makes the comparison explicit. “This place recharges us spiritually,” he says about the function of the supermarket.
Indeed, the supermarket is the novel's cathedral where Jack finds himself surrounded by incantations as in the enchanting repetition of the commercial phrase 'Kleenex Softique', customs as in Jack's observation of the ceremonial behaviour of the customers in the supermarket: “People wrote checks, tall boys bagged the merchandise … the slowly moving line edged toward the last purchase point', and its own form of asceticism which Jack senses in the “new austerity” of generic foods. It is not church, exactly, but as Murray says, “the difference is less marked than you think.” The same is true to a lesser extent for the Mid-Village Mall, where Jack shops with reckless abandon and feels “an endless well-being.” When he leaves the supermarket with two shopping carts he feels that he had achieved “a fullness of being.”
The supermarket is actually the agency where individuals such as Jack can be liberated from the dread of death through the power of consumption. Earlier in the novel Murray spells the mystical power of death transcendence of the supermarket in his reflections on The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Tibetans believe there is a transitional state between death and rebirth. Death is a waiting period, basically. Soon a fresh womb will receive the soul. In the meantime the soul restores to itself some of the divinity lost at birth…. That's what I think of whenever I come in here [supermarket]. This place recharges us spiritually, it prepares us, it's a gateway or pathway. Look how bright. It's full of psychic data.
Jack is overwhelmed by the marketing images that barrage him at the mall. He shops out of his desire or need to cultivate a sense of belonging. The products he buys have no practical function beyond their ability to make him feel somehow included in the vast cultural system around him. Part of DeLillo's strategy to achieve this sense is through the representation of the mall as a literal palace (“mirrored columns,” etc.) designed intentionally and specifically to seduce the consumer. The consumer culture offers the illusion that life exists not in individuality, but rather in constructing an identity based on one’s ability to engage the consumer culture. Such an engagement involves spending money and buying empty products with powerful images.
Consequently, Jack's involvement in the communal panic caused by the rearrangement of the grocery items on the shelves of the supermarket in the closing chapter of White Noise is really a participation in the rituals and spells collected in The Tibetan Book of the Dead – 'a guide to dying and being reborn.' Furthermore, packages and products displayed in the supermarket are the 'psychic data' which fulfil Jack's spiritual yearning. Commodities fill the psychological emptiness created by the overwhelming death obsession. He is no longer afraid of death because packages and containers can satisfy his spiritual craving to be reborn.
Thus, instead of dealing with the issues of mortality as universal connection among all people, DeLillo provides a thorough investigation of the late twentieth-century cultural and psychological mechanisms that attempt to fashion and obscure the relationship between the self and death.
If the supermarket is the 'pathway' for Jack's transcendence of death obsession, technology, as symbolized by the 'holographic scanners,' is the agency of this pathway. It is the agency for the rebirth of the dead: 'the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living.' The critic Peter Boxall suggests that ' the introduction of the bar code turns consumers themselves into products, shuffling automata whose choices and 'lifestyles' are determined by the demands of the supermarket, rather than vice versa.' This is not dehumanization as much as embracing technology as a way of salvation from twisted existence and death obsession. The absence of religion or tradition in the world of White Noise is being compensated by the values of technology and consumerism. This clearly reflected in the strong note of fascination and mysticism in Jack's description of the magical powers of the 'holographic scanners.' DeLillo confers divinity on them as they are capable of decoding the binary secret of life itself.
White Noise begins and ends with a ritual. The first is the cavalcade of station wagons arriving for the new school year, which Jack describes as a spectacle which he has not missed in 21 years. It ends with the communal ritual of selfhood transcendence. Jack can only get rid of his dread of death by embracing a collective consumer identity of the post-capitalist society.
The actual significance of chapter forty is only evident on the thematic level. It brings the three major thematic strands that run throughout the novel. These are death, sunset, and the supermarket. They are the phases of jack's rebirth. He overcomes his death obsessions, goes through the cycle of sunsets, and experiences spiritual illumination and rebirth in the supermarket.
White Noise is Jack's existential tragedy in a world of simulations and appearances. His journey is indeed tragic as he goes through a variety of painful experiences and doomed to tragic death. Indeed, Jack's sense of the tragic elevates his petty existence in a world of atrophied existence. His fatal flaw is his obsession with death that leads him to assume a false identity and a career as a Hitler studies professor. The presence of Hitler in his life and his exposure in the toxic event serve to heighten the tragic sense of his life. Hence, the significance of the attained moment of peace in the last chapter for Jack and the readers of the novel alike.
To sum up, White Noise’s sense of closure resides somewhere between the current therapeutic usage and the old biblical peace. In order to achieve peace of the soul Jack has to surrender to the collective power of consumerism in the light of the absence of the traditional spiritual values. This is an act of willing self-treatment with therapeutic effects. Yet, it implies a further surrendering of free will and individual identity as a condition to secure self-treatment. Jack finding peace in accepting his world is not only a way to cope with his existential fears and anxieties but it brings him to experience the real world as opposed to the simulated reality which is being imposed on him via the TV and the media throughout the novel.
