White Noise: Chapter 39 Summary & Analysis

Upon finding Willie Mink’s motel, Jack devises a plan to locate the man, “shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum pain, clear the weapon of prints, place the weapon in the victim’s staticky hand, find a crayon or lipstick tube and scrawl a cryptic suicide note on the full-length mirror, take the victim’s Dylar tablets,” and retreat. As he parks and walks through the motel, this plan shifts slightly—as it does for the rest of the night—but altogether remains more or less the same.

Jack locates Mink’s motel room and opens the door without knocking. Mink is sitting in a chair in a Hawaiian shirt and Budweiser shorts, watching a TV that hangs in a metal case near the ceiling. Before Jack can say anything, the man says, “Are you heartsick or soulsick?” Jack doesn’t answer, instead trying to engage in conversation. Mink answers questions rather coherently, but often inserts TV dialogue or slogans at random times, speaking them aloud without context. He periodically flings fistfuls of Dylar into his mouth, appearing to be somewhat removed from the current situation. Nonetheless, he tells Jack that he wasn’t always like this, explaining that he used to be doing important work with the development of Dylar. “Death without fear is an everyday thing. You can live with it,” he says.

After several minutes of strange and confusing conversation (in which, at various points, Jack asks about the nature of fearing death and Mink admits to his agreement with Babette), Jack says the words “plunging aircraft,” remembering that one side effect of Dylar is that it can cause the user interpret certain phrases literally. Mink jumps to the floor. Jack backs him into the bathroom, feeling an increasingly sensational feeling, as if everything is glowing with his power. Once in the bathroom, he shoots Mink twice in the stomach and then tries to put the pistol in his hand, at which point Mink pulls the trigger and a bullet goes into Jack’s wrist. Suddenly, his wonderful feeling of power—and a fearlessness of death—dissipates, and Jack realizes what he’s done. Feeling remorseful, he uses a handkerchief to slow his own bleeding and then sets to work helping Mink, dragging him out of the motel and into the backseat of the car. As he does this, he feels beneficent and mighty, thinking himself a deeply magnanimous man.

Once in the car, Mink asks Jack who shot him. “You did,” Jack replies. “Who shot you?” asks Mink. “You did. The gun is in your hand,” Jack points out. After driving around Iron City in search of a hospital, Jack finds a Pentecostal church with a neon cross above the entrance. Inside, German nuns treat both of their wounds. Jack is cared for by Sister Hermann Marie, to whom he tries to show off his knowledge of the German language, pointing to things and naming them, which seems to please her. When he asks her about heaven, though, she tells him that she doesn’t believe in God. She tells him, “The nonbelievers need the believers. They are desperate to have someone believe.” She then makes fun of him for thinking that she would believe in angels, heaven, and God. Jack appears quite troubled by this, saying, “I don’t want to hear this. This is terrible.”

Before he leaves, Jack learns from the doctor that Willie Mink will survive. He then drives his neighbors’ car home, parking it in their driveway without bothering to clean up the massive amounts of blood coating the upholstery. At home, he watches the children sleeping, then slips into bed fully clothed and finds that he can’t sleep. He gets up again and goes downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and considering the pain in his wrist.