White Noise: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

Approaching his house on foot one snowy day, Jack sees Heinrich perched on a ledge outside the attic looking east through binoculars. Going up to join him, he learns that a tank car of a passing train derailed and was punctured by something, releasing a heavy black cloud of what looks like smoke. Heinrich says that the cloud looks toxic and explosive, to which Jack says, “It won’t come this way.” When Heinrich asks how he knows this, Jack doesn’t back up his assertion with facts, merely restating that the cloud won’t reach them.

An hour later—after failing to shovel the walkway, as his father asked him to do—Heinrich is once more in the attic, this time with a radio and a map. He tells Jack that radio broadcasters have started calling the cloud a “feathery plume” and that it is comprised of a highly toxic chemical called Nyodene D., which he knows from school is harmful to rats. He is unsure how it might affect humans. He tells Jack that the radio initially said Nyodene D. would cause skin irritation and sweaty palms, but now the broadcasters are saying that it will lead to nausea, vomiting, and shortness of breath. Once again, Jack voices his belief that the toxic cloud won’t come toward the house.

Tension continues to mount as the family gains new snippets of information about the Nyodene D. release and argues about the correct terms for the cloud of toxic chemicals. Babette hears from a neighbor that the tank car spilled 35,000 gallons. She also tells Jack and Heinrich that Steffie and Denise have been complaining about having sweaty palms. “There’s been a correction,” Heinrich says. “Tell them they ought to be throwing up.” Jack decides to go downstairs to sit in the kitchen and pay some bills.

While paying the bills, Jack talks to Denise, who tells him that the emergency responders are using snow blowers to cover the spill with something that will keep it from spreading. Jack wonders when they should eat dinner, and when Denise continues to worry, he tells her that the cloud won’t reach them, though again, he provides no basis for thinking this. Babette gets off the phone with their neighbors and says that experts are no longer calling the cloud a “feathery plume,” but rather a “black billowing cloud.” Jack takes comfort in this, saying, “That’s a little more accurate, which means they’re coming to grips with the thing. Good.” In response, Babette says that there is an approaching air mass that could blow the cloud toward them. Jack brushes this off, asking again when they will eat dinner.

Jack goes back to the attic and talks to Heinrich, who tells him that the radio is no longer talking about nausea, vomiting, and shortness of breath. Instead, the broadcasters are saying that Nyodene D. causes heart palpitations and a sense of déjà vu. Heinrich also informs Jack that the terminology has changed yet again: now the cloud is being referred to as the “airborne toxic event.” Jack repeats again that the chemicals won’t reach the house, and when Heinrich presses him, he says, “I’m not just a college professor. I’m the head of a department. I don’t see myself fleeing an airborne toxic event. That’s for people who live in mobile homes out in the scrubby parts of the county, where the fish hatcheries are.”

The family sits down to an early dinner, throughout which Denise periodically rushes to the bathroom, thinking she is about to vomit. She and Steffie ask why they’re eating so early, guessing that it is so they can “get it out of the way” in case the airborne toxic event gets worse and they need to leave. Jack and Babette refuse to confirm this logic, and the family goes on eating while a chorus of sirens swirl outside. Finally, they hear the voice of a fire captain coming from a passing car; Heinrich runs to the window to listen more carefully and learns that they are being told to evacuate the area. Jack and Babette try to frame this as a suggestion, but it becomes clear that they must follow these instructions, and within twenty minutes they are all packed into the family station wagon and heading for an abandoned Boy Scout camp where Red Cross volunteers will shelter them and provide coffee and juice.

As the family drives through the snow on a crowded four-lane road, Jack tries to find a radio station that might provide some extra information. He discovers that the newest symptoms are convulsions, comas, and miscarriages. Looking out the windows, the family surveys the scene: cars driving on the road’s grassy embankments, people walking across overpasses protectively wrapped in sheets of plastic and pushing shopping carts, shoppers in strip malls unaware of what is going on, deeply confused by the sudden traffic. Heinrich, for his part, seems to have become extra animated in his attention to the situation. And despite the anxiety lurking about them, the family casually talks with one another as if they’re still sitting at the dinner table.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack sees Babette put something in her mouth. When he asks her what it is, she tells him to keep his eye on the road. He presses her, but she says only that it was a lifesaver, using her tongue to push out her cheek in a lame attempt to create the illusion that she is sucking on candy. Feeling Denise’s attention train itself on their conversation, Jack drops the matter, deciding that this is not a good time to invite Denise to question her mother’s mysterious medication use.

Driving by a car crash, Steffie declares that she’s seen all of this before, a statement that worries Jack because he was pretty sure she hadn’t heard the latest symptoms of Nyodene D. What’s more, he isn’t sure whether she even knows the meaning of déjà vu. This makes him wonder if she is so “open to suggestion” that she can quickly develop symptoms when they are proposed to her. He asks himself if a nine-year-old could experience a miscarriage via the power of suggestion, then turns of the radio, “not to help [him] think but to keep [him] from thinking.” Heinrich notices that the car is almost out of gas. Seeing a gas station ahead, Jack pulls over and jumps out to refuel. The snow has turned to rain, and the station’s advertising banners crack in the wind.

In the barracks of the Boy Scout camp, where many cots are set up for the citizens of Blacksmith, crowds form around people talking about the airborne toxic event, spreading secondhand information and making guesses. Moving from one crowd to the next, Jack is surprised to find Heinrich at the center of one such crowd, talking in great detail about Nyodene D. His listeners are charmed by him and clearly respect his knowledge. Jack feels that he is witnessing his son emerge from his shell and, not wanting to interrupt the important moment, slips away before Heinrich can notice his presence.

Jack returns to the section of cots his family has claimed. Speaking softly to Babette, he quizzes her about the thing she swallowed in the car, asking her to quickly tell him the flavor—a test she easily passes by saying, “Cherry” without hesitation. When a woman at the front of the barracks makes an announcement urging those who were possibly exposed to Nyodene D. to approach tables staffed by technicians, Denise reminds Jack that he got out of the car to refuel and that the rain could have contained the chemical. Jack waits in line and, when he reaches the technician, asks what the acronym on his armband, SIMUVAC, means. The technician explains that he is part of a program that simulates evacuations and that they are using this real-life event as practice for their simulations. He speaks scornfully about the fact that certain real-life elements are making it hard for them to execute a high-quality simulation.

Jack tells the SIMUVAC technician about his medical history, which the technician inputs into a computer. The technician tells him that he is “generating big numbers” and that the results are based not only on how long he was exposed to Nyodene D., but also on his entire medical history. He proceeds to inform Jack that the effects of the chemical are largely unknown, but that there is certainly cause for worry and that they will be able to tell him more about his condition in fifteen years—that is, if Jack is still alive. Nyodene D., apparently, has a life span of thirty years in the human body, meaning that Jack will need to make it into his eighties before he can start to feel comfortable about his health again. Whenever Jack tries to get more decisive information out of the technician, the technician defers to the computer system, telling him that he is “the sum total of [his] data.” Feeling unnerved, Jack finds himself wishing he had his academic robe and dark glasses.

When Jack returns to the cots, he sees that Babette is reading to Old Man Treadwell and a group of other blind people. Wanting a distraction, he listens as she reads sensational and far-fetched tabloid articles and absurd predictions of the future. The blind listeners seem unfazed by the ludicrous nature of the stories. Jack and Heinrich fall into a conversation in which Heinrich points out that, despite the advanced society they live in, most people remain totally unaware of how the things around them actually function. He asks Jack what he would tell a group of people from the Stone Age to improve their lives, a question that stumps his father. Eventually, Jack says he would tell them to boil water, a suggestion Heinrich finds very unimpressive.

Deciding to get some air, Jack goes outside, where he finds Murray talking to a group of prostitutes. He tells his friend about what the SIMUVAC technician told him, saying, “It is now official, according to the computer. I’ve got death inside me.” Murray puts his hands on Jack’s shoulders, looks him in the eyes, and tells him that he is sorry.

Jack comes back inside and watches Steffie sleeping, an act that makes him feel reassured and calm. At a certain point, she speaks in her sleep, muttering Toyota Celica, a phrase that Jack registers as deeply beautiful, even though he knows it is just the name of a car. In fact, “the truth only amaze[s] [him] more,” as if those two banal words have lofted into something mysterious and ancient, indicating a shining moment of “splendid transcendence.”

Suddenly, the barracks is full of noise as the displaced citizens of Blacksmith are informed that they must evacuate yet again because the cloud of Nyodene D. is headed directly for the Boy Scout camp due to a change in the wind. The Gladneys pile into the car and once more drive through the commotion of people trying to run from the cloud. Jack spots a truck with a bumper sticker that reads GUN CONTROL IS MIND CONTROL and decides to follow it, figuring that people in “right-wing fringe groups” have “practiced staying alive” and are well equipped to do so. Through the trees, Jack sees the wicked cloud of chemicals as it roars within itself, “generating its own inner storms.” Working ever harder to escape, Jack remembers his conversation with the SIMUVAC technician, recalling suddenly that he is “technically dead.” Meanwhile, his family yet again carries on the steady conversation of people at ease over dinner plates in the safety of their home.

Driving through a small creek and into a field, Jack notices his family’s lack of interest in the entire situation. He wants them to focus on the airborne toxic event and the dire situation at hand. He considers telling them about the death lurking in his body, about the large numbers he generated on the computer, but instead he resigns himself to self-pity, allowing it to “ooze” through his soul and trying “to relax and enjoy it.”

The Galdneys arrive in Iron City at dawn and are ushered into an empty karate studio along with other refugees of the airborne toxic event. It is here, where they stay for nine days before returning home, that they catch word that technicians are being lowered by helicopters into the cloud to release microorganisms that will eat the toxic agents of Nyodene D. Jack finds this as confounding and amazing as the absurd articles Babette read the previous night from the tabloids. One day, a man walks through the studio, ranting about the lacking news coverage of the airborne toxic event. Indignant, he asks, “Don’t we deserve some attention for our suffering, our human worry, our terror? Isn’t fear news?” After his listeners clap, he looks at Jack as if stricken, telling him that he’s seen him before, has seen Jack’s exact look before. When Jack asks, “What look?” he replies: “Haunted, ashen, lost.”