White Noise 1/2

Wasted Death in Iron City, the Reaper is Angry!

            White Noise permeates with the looming theme of death in every chapter. Jack Gladney and his family reside in Blacksmith, and their theme of death involves guessing at who will die first; but in a city nearby, Iron City, the death theme becomes literal. People die or almost die in Iron City, but no one notices. Iron city remains cut off from society because of its lack of media.

            Tommy Roy Foster longed to be remembered, to go down in history. He heard voices in his head and killed five people. Unfortunately for him, he chose the killing site of Iron City. “‘Insistent pressuring voices. How did he deal with the media? Give lots of interviews, write letters to the editor of the local paper, try to make a book deal?’ ‘There is no media in Iron City. He didn’t think of that till it was too late. He says if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t do it as an ordinary murder, he would do it as an assassination.’” (45) Tommy views his killing as a waste of time and rightly so, because he did plan the whole thing purposefully after all.

            Another waste of people’s time occurs in Iron City due to the lack of media, again, but this time on accident. Jack Gladney leaves to pick up his daughter from the Iron City airport when other terrified passengers enter before her. It turns out that the passengers almost experienced a “crash landing” because all the plane engines failed at the same time, and they plummeted down to earth for four torturous miles before the engines miraculously started back up. A near death experience in Iron City, what a waste. “‘Where’s the media?’ she said. ‘There is no media in Iron City.’ ‘They went through all that for nothing?’” (92)