Author: Walker

Pa Joad, or Tom Joad Sr., is the old fashioned farmer patriarch during the dust bowl, at least in the beginning of Grapes of Wrath. Jack Gladney is consumed with the fear of death, but still seems to enjoy his children and their independent lives during the 1980’s. Pa comes from a time of traditional family values whereas Jack seems to only care about family values when it comes to watching TV. They’re both fathers that gave their sons special names and have wives that are unloyal to them, yet their so different its hard to even try and compare them. What changed in 50 years?

Pa was not necessarily one of my favorite Grapes of Wrath characters. He believed he should be in charge as a patriarch solely on the basis of him being the man, and got pretty pissed when Ma started to take control. In society it was just assumed that since the man was making the money to support their family they would be in charge. Pa had some fragile masculinity, and couldn’t recognize that his judgments were wrong and he wasn’t the best to be in charge. He still loved his family though and was trying to act for the greater good of them.

Compare this to Jack Gladney though. Jack seems to only focus on himself, but still enjoys his kids and their own individuality. Jack give Heinrich his name because he wants to pass that power on from Heinrich, of nazi fame, to his son. I think that no matter what kind of parenting is in fashion, the bond between father and son will always be special, Cat Stevens knew what he was talking about.

As far as I can tell, there is no point to life, and although that seems depressing, when we look at the other option, it’s actually freeing.

I came up with this little thought experiment while reading White Noise, a novel where the characters are consumed with the fear of death. Think about what it would be like if all humans had a point to be alive that isn’t some philosophical deep stuff like “the point of life is to live” nah get that out of here. The actual point itself doesn’t matter, it just matters that there is one. For the sake of the experiment lets say that the point to living for all humans is to make cheese, and everyone agrees on this. Society is obviously not going to progress all that far and even if it does it will be cheese related. At first I thought that technology would be invented, even just for the sake of making cheese, but I don’t think any major advancement would ever be made. The only point of reproducing is to get more cheese makers, but now you have more people to feed, so why would you unless it was necessary. Consciousness is a hotly debated topic and whether we evolved to become self ware or the divine power gave it to us. If we did evolve to be conscious it was only to carry out more complex tasks, but a single purpose in life isn’t that complex. Who knows if these cheese makers could even think of something other than cheese. There’d be no tribes or villages, no society, life is just sleeping than making cheese, but hey now you have an objective purpose. Ignorance is bliss. Would we be better off with a purpose or is floundering in existential dread a worthy tradeoff?

“Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.”

This quote is from pretty much the end of Catch-22, however occurs chronologically right before chapter 1, as this is the reason Yossarian goes into the hospital. The death of Snowden was mentioned many times throughout the novel, usually in conjunction with the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, though neither fully explained for a long time. Yo Yo only has one goal throughout the whole novel and it is to stay alive, as he believes everyone is out to get him, which is true. He spends more time figuring out how to delay missions and avoid flying than basically anything else in the novel.

Yossarian understands the inevitability of death when Snowden is severely injured while on a mission. He acts immediately, attempting to bandage Snowden’s leg and to comfort the young boy. Yossarian realizes that Snowden’s entire stomach contents have spilled out and right after, Snowden dies. In the quote, Yossarian sees the truth, that humans are just matter, and will eventually all rot away like garbage. It is somewhat positive though as the last part of Snowden’s secret is that Ripeness was all. Death is unavoidable, but a piece of fruit is best when eaten ripe. Snowden showed Yossarian how precious a life is in a world that doesn’t make sense.

In the novel Catch-22, Milo Minderbinder is an officer from Minnesota that eventually takes over the kitchen as well as trade of the Mediterranean sea. Milo has three chapters in the novel that are dedicated to showcasing his enterprise M&M (stands for Milo & Minderbinder) and the effect that it has on trade all across Europe.

“The Syndicate” as Milo calls it, is a business that he started where he would take military funds to buy items, ranging from eggs to whisky to cotton, and than sell them to himself, and than buy them again using military funds. On paper, his deals were amazing because it looked like he was loosing money his items were so cheap. In fact, Milo is just equal parts genius and insane making money off of himself because whats good for him is good for the syndicate. While reading these chapters I quickly understood what Joseph Heller was getting at with the syndicate subplot. Milo Minderbinder is a profit chasing capitalist with no morals, much like most American businessmen and their companies. The free market in America combined with military contracts for private corporations turns war into a business of making money, with little regard to whats actually happening. In the climax of Milo’s syndicate it is revealed that he has contracts with the Germans too because “everyone has a share”. Milo and his employee’s bomb their own air strip, killing men, and enraging the country. Citizens and government officials called for punishment, but all stopped when he showed how much money he made off the deal. Milo Minderbinder takes advantage of both friend and foe all just to make a little money, doesn’t that sound familiar.

The bureaucracy of Catch-22 is absurdly illogical. While telling the story of a WWII Air Force bombardier named Yossarian, Joseph Heller writes of many characters and scenes which just don’t make sense.

To start out, Catch-22 slowly becomes an umbrella term for rules that seem more like paradoxes than common sense. Catch-22 is used mostly as a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. For example, the original Catch-22 states that any pilot can be grounded from combat if they are declared insane, but anyone who asks to be grounded is declared sane because you’d have to be crazy to want to keep flying, and thus they are sent back up into the air. The bureaucrats of the military have no regard for the pilots lives, and even when the war in Europe is practically over, they are still forced to go up into the air.

I think my favorite example of bureaucracy in Catch-22 is the censoring of letters being sent back home. In the beginning of the novel Yossarian is in the hospital to run away from duty, but while acting sick he still has to read through all personal letters to make sure no military information gets out. He quickly starts making up his own games and did things like censoring everything but punctuation. When he did this he signed all of them as Irving Washington, and eventually Washington Irving to change it up. Major Major does this too later in the book. He would get loads of letters to sign everyday that would get caught in loops of just signing and sending it back. He found out that if he signed Washington Irving, they didn’t come back.

White Noise by Don DeLillo is a Great American Novel in my opinion. Even though it was released in the 1980’s, it is still quite relevant to our post-postmodern world. The novel has three distinct parts, and is almost symmetrically laid out, with the middle part being just one long chapter titled The Airborne Toxic Event, and the first and third parts consisting of about 20 chapters each. Theme wise, White Noise is about the fear of death. The fear of death is natural in all humans, so while it isn’t a specifically American thing, the steps the characters take to cope and distract themselves from it are American.

The main character and narrator, Jack Gladney, teaches Hitler Studies at a generic college in a generic Midwestern town. He, and his 5th wife Babette, have crippling fears of death, and talk about it quite a lot. The first part, while not moving the plot that much, is a satirical take on academia. The white noise that the novel talks about is a little hum in the background, always there, but not screaming at you. Only one passage talks explicitly of the white noise, a conversation between Jack and Babette:

“What if death is nothing but sound?”
“Electrical noise.”
“You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful.”
“Uniform, white.”

Jack constantly notes the eclectic symphony of sounds around him like highway traffic, coffee makers, and the TV. This racket is what makes up his life; it is the white noise. Jack is so immobilized by the fear of death that he is practically already dead and surrounded by nothing but the white noise. This is what really confused me along with the fact that I think it would be impossible for someone to read this book and not lose their spot because they zoned out attempting to understand how people go about their days not succumbing to depressing thoughts of death. But in reality, America goes about unfazed, or at least that’s how it’s presented.

What is life if not just big lead up to death. It’s almost funny to talk
about our lives being a cruel joke. No real point. No end goals other than to die. Don DeLillo uses humor like how a lot of America uses humor, to cover-up the depressing truth underneath. Hitler studies, wheat germ, and trying to find too much meaning in the supermarket are just blankets we put over our heads, because maybe if we can’t see the grim reaper approaching, he won’t come and peel back the ineffective covers supposed to shield and protect our fragile lives.

As someone with tinnitus, I really like the idea of death/the fear of death as white noise. The ringing is usually nonexistent during the day, but at night I feel like I’m about to go crazy and have to turn on a fan. The fan helps but tinnitus doesn’t have a cure and I know that next time it gets quiet and I’m alone with my thoughts, the white noise will creep back in, starting as a soft buzz that eventually grows into a deafening screech, like it’s preparing for a crescendo that has yet to come.