White Noise Chapter 21-22

Chapter 21 starts off on part two of the book called "The Airborne Toxic Event". This part of the book has more action than the previous chapters of the book. Also as in chapters there are key things that I caught while reading that have a very deep and profound meaning.

To start with Delillo seems to have a fascination with death it was talked about many times in Chapter 21 and 22. After Jack has filled his car up with gas and has been informed by the SIMUVAC personnel that the computers have many blinking stars next to his name indicating he is at a high risk he begins to struggle with the idea of death. on page 137 it says, "Death has entered." He goes on also to say, "It is when death is rendered graphically, is televised so to speak, that you sense an eerie separation between your condition and yourself." This brings up a good point in that one does not like to think of death but when it is portrayed in a visual way we tend to pick up on it more and it becomes almost a depressing agent. As humans we are naturally very visible compared to other species and once again the only ones that know of our "immanent death". So some tend not to focus on it. But when the light is shined on it and you have to acknowledge it it is a weird and mysterious sense you get. You begin to wonder so many different things since no one can explain it. As in the story when he says ..."you sense an eerie separation between your condition and yourself." Can the idea of death become more psychological than death itself? Can the anticipation of it summed up over a lifetime may have greater affects on the body than actually dying? In Chapter 22 on page 162 it says, "It's strange in a way, isn't it,"..."that we can picture the dead." I noticed at the point it seems as though a question is being asked, but there is a period at the end. Wether the publisher made a mistake in the printing or Delillo meant to put the period or forgot I am not sure, that just struck me as odd but maybe it's a grammar rule I'm not aware of. This also refers to the visual aspect of "seeing death". You can see a dead person but is what your seeing really death in its true form or just the aftermath of what death is capable of?

On page 141 Jack says, "If there is a secular equivalent of sanding in a great spired cathedral with marble pillars and streams of mystical light slanting through two-tier Gothic windows, it would be watching children in their little bedrooms fast asleep." Religion has been hinted at int he book before but this one stuck out to me. Could possibly he be saying that his children bring him the same awe and wonder as a Catholic priest in awe of God's work? The next sentence only says. "Girls especially". Does he mean that maybe the wondrous awe of a female is something to be desired more than a male, in case that the male body is made for work and is brunt, but the female body is elegant and supple and much more aesthetically pleasing? Im not exactly sure what is meant by that but it could have subtextual meaning.

All in all this part of the story had "more" of a plot and it definitely picked up from previous chapters. Death is definitely a main part of this story and I'm curious to see what other parts it plays as the story tells itself out.