DeLillo's White Noise and Mao II Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

DeLillo's White Noise and Mao II - Essay Example DeLillo has proved himself as an ace analyzer of crowd situations. Jack Gladney, an off-beat professor in the studies of Hitler at the College-on-the-Hill, is the main character of "White Noise." As much as he is grim and off-keyed, his wife and children are equally the odd combination of bizarre and blas. His wife, Babette, beset with a forgetful mind nurses an ever present premonition of death. Babette's addiction to a drug called Dylar finds her in dalliance with a certain shady Dr. Gray compromising with him her body for drugs, a situation which almost ends in murder. The sons, Heinrich, 14, glum and prone to doomsday anxieties, is a chip of the old block, while 3 years old Wilder is rather assuring and conspicuous by his presence. The daughters, Denise, 11, is a brat and will brook no nonsense from her parents, calling spade a spade, and Steffie, the younger sibling, is a sensitive child who cannot bear to see anyone suffer. It is a classical case of a family living inside a capsule inexorably hurtling towards sure doomsday. The family itself is a telling commentary of the society we live in today. The glum environment may well be the product of a blended marriage with the children having to bear the brunt of a forced step-relationship over which they have no control. The novel highlights the role of children in the scheme of things in the present world. They are more sober, more sensitive, and the target consumers for marauding marketers, reflectively symbolic of the novel's mock surprise towards anything natural and tendency towards more sensitivity and sobriety found among kids rather than the grown ups. Nonetheless, they are warned of the isolation and discomfiture that are sure to follow them soon, by professors at the college. DeLillo's novels have the uncanny effect of touching upon raw nerves. They delve into the not so distant past, hover over the present, and eerily strike at the future bang on target. Written in 1985 with an industrial disaster as background, the "White Noise" draws parallel with the Union Carbide tragedy in Bhopal in 1984, and attempts to rub some sensitivity into a nation benumbed with excessive materialism and prosperity. The United States' prominent world supremacy is akin to the arrogance of Hitler minus the despotic adventurism. Typically, responsibility and control can go to the computer programs. In the quest for comfort and an easy lifestyle, the increasing tendency to fulfill every wish at the press of a button is so pervasive that it is treated as an irritant if the situation turns out to be otherwise. With the Gladney family as the background, "White Noise" goes on to reach out and catch the big picture of the industrial accident and its consequent aftermath when the evacuation lasting nine days causes seemingly endless traffic snarls and panicky inhabitants taking whatever route and protection available to escape the doomed city. News of the impending disaster after the first tentative information about the leak instinctively thrust the population nonchalantly towards their favorite supermarkets. It is only after the death of a man during inspection, and a night of "airborne toxic event" that the magnitude of the disaster sinks in