White Noise Chapters 13-20

I feel like in reading this book especially these chapters that many issues of the human way especially with death. Death is referred to many times in these chapters and also I feel there is a lot of discussion on dealing with issues in someone's life and how they deal with that.

In reading these chapters I have started to notice how the author says subtle things in the story wether or not they be of any importance I have noticed a few. On page 62 Jack is talking to Denise and Denise is worried about one of the pills Babbett is taking. Jack near the bottom of the page says .."Everybody takes something". He is referring to medications that he takes and that others take too. Is he implying everyone has some underlying condition wether it be for a mental problem, virus, or other ailment. Is he concluding to the fact that everyone has their own problems in their own ways and everyone deals with it somehow or another wether it be medication, drugs, or something else to deal with the stresses of life? Babbette says she can never sleep and has nightmares, this would make the reader believe this is what he is referring to trying to tell his child that people have problems sometimes and they need things to help coax them.

Another think that probably stuck out to me the most was on page 73. Near the bottom the book reads, "To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual to face dying alone. Crows came for this reason above all others." This to me stood out the most because as humans we are the only "animals" that realize their ultimatum which is dying at some point. Humans have an uncontrollable desire to be social almost as if to share in the suffering we know we will endure later. Does the crowd in the story believe if they are in a group it will be harder for death to single them out? What is the fascination of sharing in a suffering with other human beings. The outcome is still the same but something of the consolance of someone who knows what you are going through has many psychological effects.

On page 91 there is a man who is telling the story of a plane crash. He makes a very good point in his telling of the story about how the first pilot came over the loudspeaker and said, "We're falling out of the sky!" All the passengers were freaking out worried. Later on the next page the other pilot comes on saying "Crash landing, crash landing." Instantly the passengers fears subdue a little bit because of one word that was added on. Its amazing how one word can change emotions in someone wether it be on a small or large scale. The people are so afraid of death that they cling to any hope of longevity that they can get.

One last thing I noticed was in the story the author will throw random bits of nothing (that I can decipher anyways) in the story. On page 99 the author writes, "The emptiness, the sense of cosmic darkness." The next line says, "MasterCard, Visa, American Express." Unless the author is referring to somehow how those major credit cards can refer to cosmic darkness I'm not sure but I will look for more of those thru-ought the rest of the story and see if I see any correlationg