Summary and Response to a Critical Article

Tom LeClair "Closing the Loop: White Noise"

Tom LeClair helps provide a better understanding of some meaning to “White Noise.” LeClair clarifies why he thinks Babette is so into watching and being near the children when he says “Babette thinks of the children… as protective charms” (396). Explaining the reason that she wants to keep them young, and the youngest child, Wilder, gives her the most pleasure.

During the evacuation process in part 2 Jack and Babette try to deny the threat, the “cloud” has. LeClair explains how Jack is exposed to the toxic cloud because he was trying to protect the children. LeClair fells that DeLillo increases his irony by “having Jack observe people who are not only prepared for disaster but seem to welcome it” (399).

In part 3, LeClair gives a better understanding of Murray Jay Siskind. LeClair speaks of Siskind character in another novel Amazon under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell, but LeClair says that Siskind has a bigger role in “White Noise.” Murray is confident and influential over Jack; ultimately Siskind is the one who convinces Jack to kill “Mr. Gray.”

LeClair gives examples at the end of his writing of different types of white noise; he says it is a term for chaos. “What we hear as static may have meaning. DeLillo takes familiar sounds and turns them up, exaggerating them to give their ironic effect, and turns them down, finding in the lower frequencies a whisper of possibility” (411).

The feeling I got from reading Tom LeClair interpretation of “White Noise” was at first a sense of confusion. I felt as if there were too much information about other books that I had not read, nor was I going to read. Then finally he started analyzing what “White Noise” meant to him. Reading this gave me a slightly better understanding about some of the characters and what the story was about. LeClair gave a good summary about the book.

I am not sure how this will benefit me in writing my essay other than it gave me better insight into who the characters are and what they meant to the book.

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.

LeClair, Tom. In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel. Urbana and Chicago: 

        University of Illinois Press, 1987.

RESPONSE TO WHITE NOISE

Murphy Karen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

   

"Turmoil"

The blended family of six are living in a nice home near the College-on-the-Hill where Jack Gladney is the chairman of the department of Hitler studies. The family have a lot of thought about death and dieing and what will be the cause of their own demise.
Babette, Jack's wife, has a daughter named Denise and she likes to keep track of her mother and finds out that her mother is taking a medication that she is unable to figure out what it is named Dylar. Denise questioned Jack as to what Dylar was but he wasn't able to tell her either. Jack was not aware of Babette being on any medication by that name.
There was a train tanker that derailed and spilled a chemical called Nyodene D and Jack doesn't think that his family will be effected by the spill because they live in a nice neighborhood, but of course it does come their way and they have to evacuate. While they are evacuating Jack gets exposed to the Nyodene D for two and a half minutes while he is pumping gas and when they arrive at the safe location he has to talk with "SIMUVAC (Simulated evacuation)" (p 139) team and Jack learns that it can take 30 years before he could die from the exposure to the chemical. 
The link I added to the word turmoil above will take you to SparkNotes that gives an overview of the book and helped me understand better what this all was meaning. The picture made me think of the billowy cloud of chemical when the train derailed.

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. Penguin Books, 1985. Print.

Mid Term Letter

Ms. Laura Cline,

I want to thank you for all that you have challenged me with so far in this English class. I feel my biggest challenge is trying to learn the new technology of the blogs that we have been doing, this is new to me.  My main reason for taking online classes is because of my work schedule and home life being so busy, I am able to do my school work around all of this so learning has be quite interesting thus far. I do feel like my biggest success has been being able to keep up with all of my homework, in the classes that I am taking and staying on task, along with my everyday life challenges with work and home and starting a new position at work.

The readings you have given us have been outside anything I have read before and have been challenging for me to grasp the concept of, however, they have broadened my wanting to read more and I have recently downloaded Gulliver’s Travel to read in the future when I am done with all the other reading I have going on currently in my schedule.

My goal for the second half of the session is to continue staying on task and completing the course with at the very least a B in the class, reaching for the A. I hope to improve my run on sentences and putting my words together the correct way so I can fit enough words to fill 3 full pages of these essays because that has really been hard to do when the papers we are reading are only eight pages long.

Thank you for all your help.

Sincerely,

Toni Paxton