Death is Scary

A fundamental theme of White Noise is a fear of death and one’s own mortality. It follows the main character’s attempt to overcome his own fear of his death through the control of others mortality. I argue that instead of fearing one’s mortality, one should instead embrace. As a wise turtle once said “one often meets their fate on the path they take to avoid it”. Fear of death is entirely healthy, as the human brain evolved to fear uncertainty’s, and death is the ultimate uncertainty, as you can never truly know what happens after. You can hold religious beliefs, you can embrace nihilism, you can become a slave to consumption as demoed by White Noise, but at the end of the day, no one knows what truly comes after, and this is intrinsically terrifying. To deal with this uncertainty, and our inability to function in the face, we’ve invented a whole host of coping mechanisms, such as religion, and White Noise serves as a critique of these and human nature in general, by showing that whatever action you take, whoever you kill, you cannot escape your own mortality.