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Chapter 28
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in White Noise, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fear, Death, and Control
Uncertainty and Authority
Consumer Culture and Identity
Plots and History
Summary
Analysis
In the grocery store, Babette suggests to Jack that he should schedule a checkup with his doctor. He tells her that he’s already had two and that Dr. Chakravarty has detected nothing particularly amiss in his health. In the wake of the airborne toxic event, the town has returned to normal. Jack continues his German lessons and keeps on trying to find the Dylar. He also starts throwing old things away; he discards magazines, books, letters, shoes, socks, gloves, belts.
Jack’s grand purge of useless household items is yet another form of gaining control over his life. Throwing away old possessions is, in effect, equivalent to buying new ones: by ridding himself of useless items, he shapes his material existence.
Themes
One night on TV there is a breaking news segment about a backyard in which two dead bodies are found buried. After digging up the entire yard, though, investigators find nothing else, a fact that leaves Jack feeling strangely disappointed.
The fact that Jack is disappointed that no more bodies are found illustrates the extent to which he craves sensationalist news. Just as Alfonse Stampanato pointed out about the allure of disaster footage, Jack finds himself wanting to view something horrible as a way of punctuating and defining the otherwise meaningless flow of useless information.
Themes
