White Noise Chapters 29-36

These chapters seemed a bit slower to me and I didn't quite get as much literary meaning out of them as some other ones whatever the reason may be but I was able to find some that really peaked my interest.

ON page 217 Winnie says, "I don't know what your personal involvement is with this substance,"..."but I think it's a mistake to lose one's sense of death, even one's fear of death. Isn't death the boundary we need? YOu have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border limit."

This was a huge passage in the book I think. During the entire book the theme has been morbid and about death. Dellilo makes a big statement right here about death. As humans are we not bound by death? Ultimately whether we like it or not it affects our everyday decisions. Subconsciously though. Without a fear of dying we would have reckless abandon and then what. No one knows. Death has a certain way of keeping a person in line wether it be Death itself that does this or the fear of it, it keeps certain people in line. While others try to supersede death and cheat it it will eventually catch up to you. It is one of the processes of mother nature that cannot be toyed with.

One more thing on page 245 Murray discusses something about nostalgia, "I dont trust anybody's nostalgia but my own. Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form of nastalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country."

Could he really be saying that people become so nostalgic that they will resort to violence? It makes logical sense in a way. If a person becomes so hard pressed that they feel like they have nothing left to live for then they lose all sense of being and will do anything to feel they way they want to again. A man who has lost everything feels like he has nothing, that man will do anything to see revenge for the things in which he grieves over. It's a classic case scenario and is seen in today's world you might see it on the news or something like that.