What Is The Significance Of Airborne Toxic Events In White Noise

White Noise is a novel detailing the life of Jack Gladney, Professor and Head of Hitler studies in the College-Up-hill in Blacksmith. Despite various themes including historical reference to Hitler, the power mania created by mass media, paranoid state of the people in Blacksmith, it talks about Airborne Toxic Event in a very sensitive manner. The after effects of the airborne toxic event and the mental state of the people in Blacksmith are analyzed. Jack and Babette parenting seven children lead a very comfortable life in Blacksmith. They are happy to live in a highly protected area like Blacksmith. Jack’s family believes that they are blessed enough to live in such a safe place. This novel records many moments of Jack’s family like their
From a massive database tally the SIMUVAC man explains, “This doesn’t mean anything is going to happen to you as such, at least not today or tomorrow. It just means you are the sum total of your data. No man escapes that” (141). Airborne Toxic Event is purely individuals’ unconcerned and unconscious attempt, which made a drastic effect over generations. “It’s no wonder they call this thing the airborne toxic event. It’s an event all right. It marks the end of uneventful things. This is just the beginning. Wait and see” (151). Gerrard in his Ecocriticism Reader says, “Pollution is an ecological problem because it does not name a substance or class of substances, but rather represents an implicit normative claim that too much of something is present in the environment, usually in the wrong place” (6). Jack could not understand the impact of disastrous elements coming out of the airborne toxic event. At the same time nothing could be predicted by him related to the nature of the toxic radiations. At a point, he associates the event with natural calamities. It was a great shock for him to understand that it was not so. He expresses his painful late realization regarding the event in the following