In Chapter 13 of Don DeLillo's White Noise, we learn about the disappearance of the Treadwells, an older couple who live in the community. They are later found in a strip mall. What is significant about both their disappearance and discovery? On page 60, the narrator says that the "American mystery deepens"--what does this mean?
Babette reads tabloids to Old Man Treadwell before his own whereabouts become potential fodder for this kind of fantastical speculation. While the town-including Heinrich- drag the river ,the Treadwell’s are discovered in a cookie shack out on the interstate. The Mid Village Mall is the answer here; it shows the nature and power of the shopping center in White Noise. In DeLillo fashion we are told they survived only from sheer luck of mild weather and food scraps from cartoon character trash bins. But what is this “ landscape of remote and menacing figures” ( DeLillo 59) . If we look at the other shopping scenes of the novel we find a strange profundity, an fetishizing-exoticism of supermarkets and mallscapes. Murray compares the supermarket to the Tibetan Book of Dying. “ Here we don’t die we shop but the difference is less marked than you would think” ( DeLillo 38). Is the American Mystery found ( or lost) in the vastness of the supermarket ? But if shopping is a portal-of -sorts to death – the Treadwells do not seem to find rest or solace in this passing.
ReplyDeleteBabette and Jack report the treadwells as missing but they note they found“ no sign of anything missing” ( DeLillo 57), in their home, the woman at the police station tells them that “ There is a disappearance every 11 seconds and taped everything we said ( 57). If we look back at the theory as the Supermarket as a metaphysical transitory place , the Treadwells have perhaps failed at paying respects . Is the Mid-village mall alternatively a place of purgatory, or periphery? A place where we are stuck wandering forever between life and death - a venue to forgetting all outside the boundary lines. In either case the SUPER-market is a gray zone, all bets are off while inside. When Jack tries to quiet all noise and chatter and listen to the noise behind the noise- the white noise of the supermarket It becomes a place of mediations, meditations and of quieting- a place both cathartic and destructive to Jack’s sense of purpose and grasp on reality. This is place where Wilder teleports from cart to cart -free to explore a different kind of mystery.
But What About Wilder?
ReplyDeleteWith this I am going to make a clumsy transition to an alternative answer to the question of the “American Mystery” . Consider this lengthy passage about Wilder’s crying jag:
“ crying …a sustained inarticulate and mournful sound. These were expressions of mideastern lament, an anguish so accessible that it rushes to overwhelm…there was something permanent and soul-struck in his crying. Ululation…this was an ancient dirge all the more impressive for it’s resolute monotony as though he’s returned from a period of wandering in some remote and holy place…distances only reached which we in our ordinary toil can only regard with mingled reverence and wonder we had in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions” ( 77-79)
Wilder seems to be grounded and rooted to something more ancient and original than the other characters. He is the son of earthy Babette, a relic of some “ thing” or idea behind the white noise. Is this significant silence that comes after this primal wails an alternative to the endless copies and re-representations? So what is this unnamed and unspoken force? Is it memory or remembering? Does it refer to a mode of expression or representation that functions outside of the conflation between reality and false representation. Does his role as a silent child speak toward a state of innocence? A pre-sound and pre-memory naivete that protects him from the white noise- and does his outburst give in the the noise or rebel against conventional noise” Let’s look at how Wilder is described visually, appearing like a night-vision to Jack. “ His great round head…gave him the look of a primitive clay figurine, some household idol of obscure cultish derivation. I had the feeling he wanted to show me something” ( DeLillo). Explain WHAT exactly Wilder is trying to show us? Could he be a metaphor/metonym (?) for a moral and moderate approach to the chaos of the novel? Babette, Wilder’s mother is notably sexualized physically – I see her as a kind of fertility idol -a precursor to little clay “primitive-Wilder”. Does this ( pre-Dylar) physicality work against Jack’s paranoia in the same way as Wilder?
“ I watch her all the time doing things in measure sequence, skillfully with seeming ease, unlike my former wives- a self absorbed and high strung bunch” ( DeLillo 5). Babette’s physical movements, --her exercise routines , mammary-filled sexual comforts and loose disheveled hair – Are they alternatives to the “ false extrasensory flashes” ( 34), the amnesiac white noise that stands in the way of personal and historical memory? This may be a stretch but is it possible to liken this physicality to the slow geological excavation, the metaphors to the geological/physical world in Fugitive Pieces? Are Wilder and Babette the unlikely cure for the pervasive Deja-Vu? Is the creation of Wilder among the White Noise the real Great American Mystery?
The disappearance of the Treadwells is significant for several reasons, but one of the main reasons is the lack of attention that is given to their disappearance. When Babette and Jack go to their home, they realize that they have not been there for some time, but no one else in the neighborhood even seems to realize they were gone. The significance of this is the disconnected and introverted nature of all the characters in the story. Every character is concerned with how things affect them, making them unconcerned with what happens to others. Thus, when the Treadwells disappear no one notices.
ReplyDeleteTo continue on Janika's post about the cookie-cutter format for the shopping mall and the interdependence of the people on these places, it is important that the Treadwells are found there because it continues the self-absorption of the people present. The Treadwells are in a well visited mall, yet no one seems to notice them in the abandoned cookie stand. Thus the American mystery seems to possibly be how we can be amongst each other without really seeing what is going on around us?
Sarah Wissel
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the Treadwells disappear in a strip mall; the location itself is important. The fact that it is a strip mall refers back to this overbearing theme of the consumer culture of America. Also, because this mall is an unknown place to the Treadwells, a mystery, it becomes a terrifying and overwhelming experience. This touches upon the fear of the unkown that pervades the novel. This is part of the mystery that DeLillo refers to on page 60. Everything has a sense of mystery that is unknown and this is the main source of fear in America. Americans like to be aware of their immediate world (via media, etc) and when they aren't, a sense of mystery seeps in, and with it, fear.
After the Treadwells disappear, the police consult a psychic to help find them. While she does not find them, she makes some other discovery for the police. Somehow this does not match up; it doesn't make sense. There is a sense of mystery in this situation as there is with the supernatural aspect of psychics in general. Psychics go under the category of "supernatural" along with aliens, etc. Americans cannot understand these supernatural things, and because of this lack of understanding, they become obsessed with knowledge of these things. During the airborne toxic event, Babette reads tabloids about aliens aloud and no one questions the validity of the claims being made. They believe anything that the media tells them, craving any information that keeps them from feeling isolated from the "truth." So, the "American Mystery" refers to anything Americans do not understand as well as what readers perceive to be "mysterious" about the actions and responses of Americans in the novel.
Perhaps this is Delillo's way of commenting on the notion of taking ethical responsibility for the other. As everyone's already stated, no one really takes stock of the Treadwells' disappearance or reappearance in the gray-zone that is the strip-mall. Perhaps Delillo is suggesting that our tendencies as a consumer society to preoccupty ourselves with the materiality of capitalism and the stresses of uncertainty rob us of our ability to connect with and ethically care for the other. Perhaps the American mystery is just that - the enigmatic and evasive how: how could we forgo our ethical responsiblities to each other for an unethical obession with consumerism?
ReplyDeleteChris
What most called my attention in the Treadwells' disappearance and reappearance was in fact Jack's assessment of the happening; his explanation to the couple's lack of action. Jack is a man of a weak and even pitiful character. He holds on to the powerful image of Hitler and all the German culture represented by him because this makes him feel bigger and stronger, but he doesn't even know the language (which is one of the, if not "the" main representative feature of culture). He feels complete, reassured of himself, his wills, his purposes, and even happy while feeding his need of consumerism in a supermarket. He creates a wordplay pseudonym to give himself a more respectful aura as an scholar, and ends up becoming a puppet of his own name. Jack is extremely stereotyped in all aspects of his personality and life, and for such a character the most acceptable possibility is that the couple was overwhelmed by the circumstances, by the grandiosity of what is unknown, and so, made incapable to react. That the couple was overcome by their own helplessness. As if helplessness were something accepted and remarkable in their lives. A feature so outstanding that it would prevent them from acting for their own welfare.
ReplyDeleteAll these possibilities behind Jack's explanation of the case seem to be no more than an attempt to delegate his own flaws to somebody else. Of extending his weaknesses and unsteadiness to others and explaining their actions through the scope of his own limitations. Jack, in both ih pervasive fear of death,and his refusal of taking actions at the first sight of the "toxic cloud" sets himself as someone bound to be overcome by his own helplessness.
I also believe that the couple getting lost in a mall (paramount symbol of consumerist society) is a clear metaphor of the power consumerism takes on over the main characters (and all of us as well) as something overwhelming that leads people to lose themselves. Something bigger than the individual and holder of a power to make them forget their problems, and their lives. And that is, to a certain extent, how Jack feels about going to the supermarket and buying and buying.
Here's just a comment related to the class discussion but which is not directly related to the question of this post.
ReplyDeleteOne fact that happened in Brazil which connects to what we discussed in class about the influence of media in people's interpretation and assimilation of events came to my mind during the discussion of White Noise. What called my attention was the similar reaction of the "stereotyped" United States society and the Brazilian society. As pointed out by Murray in DeLillo's chapter 11, TV is a primal and important force in "American" life. Well, so it is in Brazilian life.
In 2008 a father and a stepmother were charged and convicted for killing their 5 year-old daughter throwing her outside the window in the 6th floor. For months that was the MAIN topic in the media, being on the cover of the most important magazines, and ALL news broadcasting programs. For that period, judging the parents' action and scrutinizing every aspect of everyone of the involved's lives was the main concern of a great deal of the population eager to discover every possible detail made available at any time.
One might blame all the media fuss over the case on the shocking nature of the case itself: parents killing their children. However, crime, no matter who the victims or the perpetrators are is shocking and vile in it's nature. A good explanation for the grandiosity of the case then might be found on the explanatio Alfonse Stompanato gives to Jack in chapter 14, when inquired about the reason for the fascination caused by catastrophes on television: since people are bombarded with information every day, catastrophes, or a crime such as the aforementioned, can disturb the constant flow of desensitized data.
So, what about the other crime cases (thousands of) that don't become public, or at least sensationalized? These other cases, as awkwardly pointed out by Bee in chapter 18, if there's no media coverage (either here or in Brazil), all these people must have been through their ordeals for nothing...