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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.

Alright, I am going to evaluate whether or not I would say White Noise by Don DeLillo is a Great American Novel. Personally, I did not really like the book very much for most of the time I was reading it, but there were some fascinating moments, conversations between characters, and themes explored. Whether or not I liked the novel does not have any real bearing on whether or not the novel was actually good however. My criteria for a Great American Novel is the same that I used for evaluating whether or not Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 was a Great American Novel, which I thought was. My criteria is as follows: the novel explores complex ideas and themes, is well written, and the story elements of the novel (plot, characters, setting) are strong. I’ll be mainly focusing on the first criterion and quickly stating whether or not the next two apply to White Noise.

Firstly, I believe that White Noise definitely explores complex themes, some of those being the absurdity of American Academia, the white noise of American Culture, sex, ownership, and revenge from a masculine point of view, and the fear of death. The primary structure White Noise uses to satirize American Academia is Jack Gladney’s Hitler studies program. One quotation from Murray during his last conversation with Jack Gladney specifically highlights how absurd it is to study or idolize a human figure to the point of having an entire college major based around them: “”Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom,” page 125. Murray is indirectly implying that the Hitler studies program is absurd and unintellectual by stating that helpless people are drawn to Hitler, and thereby the Hitler studies program. Also, the façade which Jack Gladney adopts in order to be more respected as the leader of the Hitler studies program is satirized by Heller in White Noise. It should not be necessary for an intellectual figure such as a college professor to adopt a persona, but stereotypes of American Academia and American culture in general incentivize such a meaningless front. The irony of Jack Gladney not knowing the German language also adds to the absurd portrayal of academia in White Noise.

American Culture and capitalism is also explored in White Noise, through the portrayed absurdity of all of Babette Gladney’s health food items and the semi-American idea of picking and choosing which capitalistic vices to indulge in. For example, when Denise confronts Babette about her excessive sugarless gum-chewing, which Denise deems damaging, Babette says that either she chews sugarless gum or gum that is harmful to rats, to which Denise asks her why she chews gum in the first place if it is a lose-lose situation. Babette then states that if she does not chew gum she will smoke, and if she does not smoke she will get fat, which brings up the inevitable question inside of the reader, why does Babette have to take part in these vices in the first place? The answer is that this is how American capitalism and consumerism has engineered common Americans throughout the entirety of their lives. This is the point that White Noise is making, American consumerism is omnipresent but undeservedly so, because it is truly white noise, meaningless. Another element in this theme that is frequently touched on throughout the novel is the colorful packaging of many essential goods displayed whenever the Gladneys go to a store.

White Noise also explore the theme of sex, ownership, and revenge from a masculine point of view. I mean one of the driving forces behind Jack Gladney’s mental decline towards the end of the novel and his eventual attempted murder of Willie Ming is his sexual passion for his wife Babette which drives feelings of ownership towards her. These feelings of sexual ownership by Jack change into a drive towards revenge once Jack is sexually slighted by Willie Ming. I think the point that Don DeLillo is trying to make with this theme is of how powerful this emotion is in men. Jack’s sexual passion and relationship with his wife drives him towards a fear of death which in turn drives him towards attempted murder and gives him a target. A very powerful force drives rational humans to pursue what Jack pursues.

The last idea that is explored well in White Noise is the fear of death. I think that the main message that DeLillo is trying to portray about the fear of death is that it is both rational and useless to fear death. I explore this further in my other long blog post. Scroll down to yesterday to find it.

Besides the exploration of complex themes, White Noise also is well written and has good characters and setting. I’d say the plot is a bit scattered, but this is not counter to the novel’s greatness, because the novel’s point is not to have an amazing plot. This is why I believe that White Noise is a Great American Novel even though I don’t personally like it.

As I Lay Dyingfollows the Bundrens, a poor southern family during the Great Depression. Addie Bundren, the family matriarch, has fallen gravely ill and is facing death. She decides that she wants to be buried in Jefferson which is a nearby town that the family will need to bring her body to once she dies. When she dies, the family honors her wish and takes her body to Jefferson, but along the way they encounter a plethora of difficulties that seem to take the few resources and resolve they have left. They even lose another family member along the way as Darl Bundren is put in a mental institution for burning down a barn to try to incinerate Addie’s body. His attempt to burn her body fails however and the family buries Addie in Jefferson. Right after burying Addie, Anse, her husband, finds a new wife. The constant misery suffered by the family seems to beg the question of whether the purpose of this book is to show resilience through adversity or to simply paint a picture of misery. In my opinion, this book was written to show just how miserable life can be sometimes. The context in which it was written was the Great Depression so this seems reasonable to me.

One of the core motifs in White Noise is that many of the people within the book array their lives around consumerism and the consumption of goods and services. This focus on life begins to change for main character jack after his brush with death, and he begins to realize that the consumption and academia he’s based his life around is truly quite shallow and meaningless. I think the book’s emphasis on consumerism is a critique of how life in the 80’s, when this book was published, was moving away from more traditional religious values and towards more free, consumerist ideas. I think this shift in what gives one’s life meaning has been occurring and is occurring in the modern age, but instead of consumerism, humanity’s focus has shifted to politics. Part of being human is the human experience, and the human experience is inherently tribal in nature. Humans evolved to need to be a part of an in group, as this was critical to survival for much of human history, and part of being within an in group is having an out group you’re arrayed against. Throughout human history these needs were filled through living within towns, communities, and nations, and waging warfare against other, outside groups. One of the last bastions of these instincts to be a part of something bigger than oneself was religion, and as society has become increasingly secular, so too has participation in and dedication to religion decreased. In its place humans, by their very nature, required a new in group to ally themselves with and a new out group to work against. The answer, for many, has been politics, and I think that is why our society in the modern day has become so incredibly polarized. Political thought has ceased being just that, thought, and has instead morphed into a kind of religion in its own right, with its own forms of heresy, devotion, and even worship of central political figures. Political ideas have morphed from someone’s beliefs into a dogma, that isn’t to be questioned and enforced on those who attempt to subvert or change its tenets. Political debate has morphed from the discourse it once was into a battleground quite similar to the centuries long conflict between Christians and Muslims over control of Europe. Because of this, changing someone’s political beliefs has become akin to attempting to convert them to your religion, to change their underlying way of thinking to more closely match yours. This attempted conversion is not met well by most, and one’s natural response is to block of the person trying to change you by dehumanizing them, so instead of having to fight and against and prove wrong their attempts, you can dismiss them out of hand. This is also part of why political debate has become so fraught with stereotypes, you’re not arguing against another person and trying to disprove their ideas, you’re ‘punching nazis’ or ‘owning the libs’. Instead of debating the person in front of you, your fighting a strawman of what you think they are, as they do the same to you. This is why I think American political discourse has withered, and I don’t think it’ll get any better until American’s find something else to base their lives around, an idea that is akin, to telling a devout religious person to change.

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?

This blog post is a reflection on The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I enjoyed reading this novel because I learned more about what life was like during the Dust Bowl. Prior to this novel, I had never read anything that was based on life during that time period, so I was interested throughout. Even though this novel was just based on one family, The Joads, other families are seen briefly throughout the novel. The reader can see how difficult life was for these families, many of them having to completely pack up their lives and move out west in search of jobs and food. One quote I like from this novel is, “’I know.’ Ma chuckled. ‘Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin’. Don’ you fret none, Tom. A different time’s comin’.” Ma is explaining to Tom how they need to keep working hard and that even though they’re struggling now, their lives will get better and good things are on the way. I think this quote really represents the theme of perseverance in the novel. No matter how many times the Joad family gets knocked down, there’s always someone there to keep them going. They go through so many struggles throughout the novel, including starvation and the struggle of finding jobs. Their will to persevere and survive is what eventually helps the Joad family find jobs and have a roof over their heads. 

For this post, I decided to reflect on the novel, No Country For Old Men. I really enjoyed reading this novel because it was very intriguing. Cormac McCarthy wrote this novel in a very specific way. His writing style is unique because it is written like it was designed to become a screenplay. For example, “He switched off the light and stood. He walked out slowly to where the other bodies lay. The shotgun was gone. The moon was already a quarter ways up. All but day bright. He felt like something in a jar.” This quote shows the style of writing throughout the novel. The sentences are short and due to this, the plot is moved along very rapidly. Along with the writing style, another interesting thing in this novel in Ed Tom Bell’s soliloquies. These are at the beginning of each novel and Ed Tom Bell describes a certain event that has happened to him in his life. These soliloquies add a lot of context to the novel because they give the reader insight into his life and things he has gone through in the past.

After reading the whole novel, my favorite character was Chigurh. I liked him throughout the novel because he was very mysterious and it was hard to predict what he was going to do next. The reader never knew when he was going to kill someone or blow something up, which was the novel intriguing and it kept me wanting to read more.

“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 1939, two books were published that we read together in class. The Grapes of Wrath and The Day of The Locust. Both were set during The Great Depression. A time of uncertainty and unrest among American citizens, and it wasn’t much better in the rest of the world. The Grapes of Wrath and The Day of The Locust are not the only two books that I have read that take place during the depression. As a kid, I read books that took place during the depression, such as, Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis and some of the American Girl Doll books about Kit.

I think I know the reason why so many of the books I have read take place during these chaotic years and those following. I think it is because everyone knows about this time period and the effects it had on American society today. It was the chain reaction that started the creation the modern America we know today. A time period where new problems faced America never seen before but we faced them head on.

There are points in The Grapes of Wrath and The Day of The Locust it is shown that “The American Dream” is not always possible, but there has to be a reason people come today for a better life. I think if there is one thing that The Great Depression showed people about America is that we are tough. We had a massive amount of our population jobless, homeless, and starving, and a few years later fighting a war and winning it.

These thoughts have led to a sudden revelation for me. Over the last semester I have been asking myself what defines a novel as “American”. I know what defines a good novel but what about the American part. I have come to the conclusion there is no one way that defines a novel as an “American” novel, but if there is one way, it should be about showing America for what it is. A young and flawed nation built on dreams and hopes that do not always come true. A nation that continues to thrive to this day.

Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff in No Country for Old Men, seems to believe that times have changed drastically since he first became a police officer. He reminisces about the old times where sheriffs didn’t even need to carry any guns and how criminals still seemed to be human. Over the course of his career as sheriff, the crimes he deals with have become increasingly awful, leading him to believe that there has been a change in how people act on a basic level and that he was built for a better and more peaceful time, hence the name No Country for Old Men. He believes that human nature has shifted across the decades to become more cruel and violent. In my opinion, the main purpose of the book is to allow the reader to come to their own conclusion on whether Ed Tom Bell is correct or not. Personally, I disagree with Ed Tom Bell; I believe that human nature has never changed and will never change. Human nature causes people to commit the most disgusting and terrible of crimes and perform the greatest acts of kindness imaginable. History repeats itself for a reason, and Ed Tom Bell should understand that after his long career in law enforcement.