Guns in White Noise17 February 1994

22 Heinrich is fourteen. Babette is afraid he will end up in a barricaded room,

spraying hundreds of rounds of automatic fire across an empty mall before

SWAT teams come for him with their heavy-barreled weapons, their bull

horns and body armor.

23 Is it raining?…What if someone held a gun to your head?…He holds a gun to

your head…He’s holding a gun to your head.

25 Heinrich “plotting chess moves in a game he plays by mail with a convicted

killer.”

26 All plots move deathward.

43 Discussing Tommy Roy Foster. “Like who did he kill?” — H. “Who did he

kill?” — J.

44 He was under pressure shot five people in Iron City. “Did he care for his

weapons obsessively? Did he have an arsenal stashed in his shabby little

room off a six-story concrete park?”

44 Some handguns and a bolt-action rifle with a scope.

44 I was just waiting for the bus when I heard this little popping noise like

firecrackers going off.

44 Voices on TV telling him to go down in history.

44 If he did it over again, he’d kill one famous person, make it stick.

60 Looking for Treadwells, police use psychic data and find drugs and handgun.

63 Jack, re Hitler: It’s not a question of greatness. It’s not a question of good

and evil. I don’t know what it is. Look at it this way. Some people always

wear a favorite color. some people carry a gun. Some people put on a

uniform and feel bigger, stronger, safer. It’s in this area that my obsessions

dwell.

76 Re: hospitals. I would rather visit an emergency ward, some urban well of

trembling, where people come in gut-shot…These things have nothing to do

with my own eventual death, nonviolent, small-town, thoughtful.

127 Re: ATE. Our fear was accompanied by a sense of awe that bordered on

religious. It is surely possible to be awed by the thing that threatens your

life, to see it as a cosmic force, so much larger than yourself, more powerful,

created by elemental and willful rhythms. This was a death made in the

laboratory.

145 Tabloid prophesy. “Beatle assassin Mark David Chapman will legally change

his name to John Lennon and begin a new career as a rock lyricist from his

prison cell on murderer’s row.” The killer supplanting the dier.

157 Their bumper sticker read GUN CONTROL IS MIND CONTROL. In

situations like this, you want to stick close to people in right-wing fringe

groups.

193 Babette on Dylar: “I could not distinguish words from things, so that if

someone said ‘speeding bullet,’ I would fall to the floor and take cover.”

225 Babette: “How do I know you won’t kill him?”

“You’re my wife. Am I a killer?”

“You’re a man, Jack. We all know about men and their insane rage.…

Homicidal rage.

243 Jack on Vernon Dickey: “He would be Death, or Death’s errand runner.

252 Vernon: What we have here is a situation we ought to conduct in private.

This house is full of women.

252 I want you to have this, Jack.

252 In your whole life as a man in today’s world, have you ever owned a firearm?

253 I said to myself here’s the last man in America who doesn’t own the means to

defend himself” (from other men taking his wife).

253 There was something unreal about the experience of holding a gun.…Was he

Death’s dark messenger after all?…How quickly it worked a change in me,…

not wishing to give it a name.

253 Did Vernon mean to provoke thought, provide my life with a fresh design, a

scheme, a shapeliness? I wanted to give it back.

253 This here is a 25-caliber Zumwalt automatic. German-made. It doesn’t have

the stopping power of a heavy-barreled weapon but you’re not going out

there to face down a rhino, are you?”

253 It’s only a question of time as to when you’ll want to use it.

254 It occurred to me that this was the ultimate device for determining one’s

competence in the world.

254 A concealed, lethal weapon. It was a secret, it was a second life, a second

self, a dream, a spell, a plot, a delirium.

254 “We don’t want guns in our little town.” Jack resists bringing plot into town.

272 Now and then I thought of the Zumwalt automatic hidden in the bedroom.

274 Whenever I remembered the gun…I felt a small intense sensation pass

through me. Whether pleasurable or fearful I wasn’t sure. I knew it mainly

as a childhood moment, the profound stir of secret keeping.

274 What a sly device a handgun is. One so small in particular. An intimate and

cunning thing, a secret history of the man who owns it.…Was I immersing

myself, little by little, in a secret life.

285 Technology is lust removed from nature.

287 Murray: “Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic

figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom.”

290 “I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and

diers.”

291 Murray: “To plot is to live.”

297 The next day I started carrying the Zumwalt automatic to school. It was in

the flap pocket of my jacket when I lectured, it was in the top drawer of my

desk when I received visitors in the office. The gun created a second reality

for me to inhabit.…It was a reality I could control secretly dominate.

297 Examines guns and bullets.

298 If I had a gun, why was I scared?

298 I broke into a shambling trot, my gun hand in my pocket, clutching the

automatic. Chasing Winnie Richards.

304 Here is my plan. Shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum pain,

clear the weapon of prints, place the weapon in the victim’s sticky hand…

(Gun as agent.)

308 Murray had also said, Imagine the visceral jolt, watching your opponent

bleed in the dust. He dies, you live.

310 This was my plan…gut shoot him maximally three times.

311 I was ready to kill now. But I didn’t want to compromise the plan. The plan

was elaborate.

311 I said to him gently, “Hail of bullets.”…He hit the floor.

312 I fired the gun, the weapon, the pistol, the firearm, the automatic.

312 Marvels at the rich color of the blood.

312 I fired a second shot just to fire it, relive the experience.

312 A richness, a smashing intensity.

313 He raised his hand and pulled the trigger, shooting me in the wrist. The

world collapsed inward.

314 Who shot me? he said.

314 You did.

314 Who shot you

314 You did. The gun is in your hand. (Gun takes on agency.)

314 What was the point I was trying to make?

315 You were out of control. You weren’t responsible. I forgive you.

315 Having shot him, having led him to believe he’d shot himself, I felt I did

honor to both of us, to all of us, by merging our fortunes, physically leading

him to safety.

315 “We’re shot,” I said, lifting my wrist in the air.

Guns in DeLillo’s White Noise

Gun is control, plot, information.

Control. Control is control of others, of self-boundaries with secrets. It is

threatening and powerful. Looming. Control Mink, wife. Gun represents a

freedom from fear and weakness. Gun is threat to Jack. What if someone held a

gun to your head. Using gun is overcoming threat of violence. Also represents

power. Using gun is getting control. Tommy Roy Foster got power through use of

gun. Also an instrument of loss of control. Heinrich shooting up mall, Jack telling

Mink he lost control (315). Tool for greatness. Power is to overcome paranoid

visions of existing control systems. If Gun Control is Mind Control (157), then Gun

is Control. Control of boundaries of self with gun-secret. Something that

separates him from everyone else (274). Gun so powerful, it sacrifices Jack’s

agency (314, 315). Using gun is struggle to control its power. Jack fails to control

it. Wife’s adultery made him feel weak, despite his affectations of power. Had to go

do something. Defend himself, defend his manhood (253). At the same time,

wanted to defeat death, according to Murray’s rules of killers and diers (290).

Ultimate device for determining one’s competence (254). Wants to be looming like

sun and ATE (127, 287). Doesn’t work, though. Scared even with gun (298).

Information. Plot is making life mean something, breaking out of

meaninglessness. Equaling ties to intelligence community. Gives Jack a shape, a

plan. Gun carries with it a network of history and information. It was a secret,

spell, a plot, a delirium (254). How had Vernon Dickey used it? Where were those

other bullets? Also, carries the history of all other guns. Just as Jack used strength

inherent in German language. Also, favorite color & uniform speech (63). Men

have history, just like guns. Babette says men have homicidal, jealous streak (225).

Vernon implies women don’t have the same understanding of guns as men. There is

a rage in every weapon.

Plot. Information is the history of the gun, the secrets of others. The power of all

guns and that gun is locked inside it, pushing it into plots. Gun is tool for creating

plot. It was a secret, spell, a plot, a delirium (254). Every plot moves deathward,

every gun moves deathward. Plot involves life and death. To plot is to live (291).

Jack wants to do something to stand out. When talking about Tommy Roy Foster,

there is an eagerness to know, a disappointment that Foster got nothing out of

shooting six people. A need for the spectacular. Plot to kill Mink doesn’t even

work. Takes guy to hospital, instead. Wants to transcend average level of man.

Uses technology of gun to remove lust from nature (285). The gun gives him threat

of death. Substitutes for Mein Kampf. Take energy of someone else. To plot is to

live because every plot moves against death. Be like sun, ATE. Not controlling, but

intense.