Journal #1

White Noise

Throughout White Noise by Don Dellillo, the characters grapple with their fear of death

in such an extreme way that it severely impacts their lives. The focus appears to be on the idea of

dying at all, but I would argue that what Delillo is actually pointing out is not that we are afraid

of death, but that we are afraid of an anonymous one.

One significant time that Delillo shows how afraid the characters, and by extension we,

are of an anonymous death is on page 155, when a man at the evacuation camp rants about the

lack of news coverage of the event:

No film footage, no live report. Does this kind of thing happen so often that nobody cares

anymore? Don’t those people know what we’ve been through? We were scared to death.

We still are … What exactly has to happen before they stick their microphones in our

faces and hound us to the doorsteps of our homes, camping on out lawns, creating the

usual media circus? Haven’t we earned the right to despise their questions? … Our fear is

enormous. Even if there hasn’t been a great loss of life, don’t we deserve some attention

for our suffering, our human worry, our terror? (155)

The interesting part of this rant is his use of the word “deserve” and the phrase “earned the

right”. Both terms indicate that fear and suffering can only fit into our worldview if we get some

social credit or attention from it. The man is not outraged by the event, he is terrified of the fact

that it may go unnoticed; that his fear may not be worth even a second of attention. This fear is a

bit of a trap, as we are shown at multiple points that a televised death does not equate to a

meaningful death. On page 64, in fact, Jack’s family gets together for the first truly successful

Friday night gathering; they are brought together by watching footage of disaster after disaster.
They do not mourn for the people experiencing tragedy; they do not give a second thought to the

lives lost or the pain experienced. They watch in enjoyment, “wish[ing] for more, for something

bigger, grander, more sweeping” (64). I think part of the reason our fear of death is so impossible

to regulate is that we are so terribly afraid of it going unnoticed while being simultaneously over-

aware that we do not notice the deaths of others, and no one will notice ours.

When televised death fails to satiate our need for our death to mean something, we are

left hoping that we are noticed by those who know us. On page 206, Gappa says “But there is

something even more childish and satisfying than self-pity, something that explains why I try to

see myself dead on a regular basis, a great fellow surrounded by sniveling mourners”. Starting

with the first sentence, I think the word “satisfying” is a revealing one. Later, on page 270,

Murray and Jack talk about how the fear of death comes from the feeling of life being

incomplete. While only a fool would say that imagining himself dead means that Gappa is not

afraid of death, as deep down we all are, he seems to be less afraid because he imagines himself

receiving lots of attention when he is dead, which gives him a sense of “satisfaction” and the

feeling that his life is complete.

Gappa also describes himself as “a great fellow surrounded by sniveling mourners”,

suggesting that the reason he is great is because he collected enough people who noticed his

death that he is able to be surrounded. I think it would be near impossible to find a person

regarded as being successful in life that does not have many who mourn their death, and what

does it say about our views of life and death that a successful life can be measured by the number

of mourners you’ve collected? A life focused on collecting attendees for your funeral cannot be

fulfilling, but we cannot imagine a death more tragic or terrifying than the one that does not get a

single head to turn.

 The problem with this is that the world will not stop when we die. The sun will still rise,

and most people will not even know you died. Very few people, if there is anyone at all, can

meet whatever threshold of attention we need for our death to feel okay. Even someone with

more social standing, like Jack, does not escape the fear of death. I think part of this is that we

want more than a passing conversation between two coworkers in a grocery store, but even those

of us that have more social credit barely get that. Death is the biggest event in our lives. It is the

ultimate wall, our point of orientation, the thing that gives our life any meaning. We are not

afraid of the end. We are afraid that we defined our lives by our deaths, and we are terrified of

the fact that we will be lucky if either is remembered in a passing remark.

Journal #2

Propaganda

In his book Propaganda, Jacques Ellul writes about how the propagandist influences the

propgandee in ways beyond our control. But more importantly, he does not use that as an

opportunity to let the people off the hook. Rather, Ellul argues that we have given ourselves up

to propaganda so much that we cannot claim to be blameless. He writes:

We must not think that a man ceases to follow the line when there is a sharp turn. He

continues to follow it because he is caught up in the system. Of course, he notices the

changes that has taken place and he is surprised. He may even be tempted to resist… but

will he then engage in a sustained effort to resist propaganda? Will he disavow his past

actions? Will he break from the environment in which his propaganda is active? … Such

breaks are too painful… Immediately thereafter he will hear the new truth reassessed a

hundred times …and he does not have the strength to fight against it each day on the

basis of yesterday's truth. (19)

The word that is worth latching on to the most is “painful”. Ellul does not argue that we are not

aware that there is a performance; we are, at least subconsciously, aware that there are things

happening. And yet we refuse to break away. While the man may originally claim to be unaware

that there was a line to begin with, once he encounters that first sharp turn his innocence in his

own indoctrination disappears. For better or worse, we stick with things even once we have lost

true belief, because, as Ellul says, to break away is too painful. On a much smaller scale, I think

that can be seen with atheists who stay in the church. They may be non-believers, but the fear of

losing that community or of diverging from what is expected of them holds them in so much fear

that the risks outweigh the benefits in their minds. Even in that smaller way, they choose to
continue on the line. I think that we have been exposed to propaganda for far too long for us to

not have repressed it, so I do not think that we are always aware we are following a line.

Therefore, if even straying off course in a situation small enough to comprehend is painful

enough for us to choose not to do it, it would take superhuman strength for someone to not only

recognize the true nature of the world but to also accept the pain that comes from stepping out of

line on such a large scale. As Ellul says, we do not have the strength to fight.

Without the ability to break free, we end up collaborating with our imprisoners. We try to

exercise what little control we may have in whatever way we can. Ellul says:

If he is a propagandee, it is because he wants to be, for he is ready to buy a paper, go to

the movies, pay for a radio or TV set…He wants to submit to this influence and actually

exercises his choice in the direction of the propaganda he wishes to receive. (103-104)

Once again, we see that man is not innocent in their own predicament. On one hand,

collaborating in this way is reasonable; we are not willing to break away from the lines

completely, so it makes sense to at least try and influence which line you are stuck on. That

being said, I am not sure if that is worse than if we gave up completely. Is a prisoner that lets

himself be imprisoned without any fight more or less innocent in his situation than the one that

works with his imprisoners to make his stay more appealing to him? If we stopped consuming

our preferred content we would not be more in control, but we could at least claim that we kept

our dignity, or whatever is left of it when we let ourselves be in this situation in the first place.

The methods that Ellul mentions are outdated now but the principles still hold true. I, like

most of us, am fully aware that the content I consume- be it books, TikToks, or college classes-

feeds in to all of this. In fact, I actually think his argument has gotten even worse. At least the

man buying the newspaper can claim it was subconscious; we lost that right the moment we
accepted targeted content. We know that the algorithms are made to show us content like that

that we have already seen and enjoyed and prevents us from seeing anything different. We are all

too aware of the echo chamber of it all and yet are completely unwilling to take the smallest step

out of it. For the most part we actually just identify with it- instead of trying to confuse TikTok’s

algorithim to show us outside perspectives, we group ourselves by being on book-tok, gay-tok,

etc.
Journal #3

Imaginary Biography

A large part of Rilke’s “Imaginary Biography” is about identity and the ways in which

we lose it, but I think the line “Defiance. The one crushed will be the crusher and he avenges his

defeats on others” (5-6) illuminates the idea that, even in rebellion, there is no identity.

To begin, the word “defiance” means an open disobedience, but you cannot be

disobedient, or defiant, if you do not place any value in the thing you are supposed to do or in the

person who is telling you to do it. In order to be defiant, you must care. I would then argue that

even the act of trying to be defiant is just a further loss of identity, as you sacrifice a bit of

whatever sense of identity you have left to define yourself by being anti-something else, which is

still letting that thing be a part of your “identity”. It is not a furthering of your identity; it is the

other side of the coin. There is no disobedience if you do not see something to obey.

Even in “the one crushed will be the crusher”, identity is sacrificed. Becoming like who

or what hurt you isn’t identity, it’s mimicry. The Viceroy would not have its colors without the

Monarch, so can it really call its design its own? Furthermore, you may now be being defined as

part of a different level of the scheme, but that does not change the fact that you are being

defined as part of it still. The crushed and the crusher are both cogs in the same machine; it’s not

true identity so much as it is sorting into a group, and a group cannot be individual identity.

“Avenging [your] defeats on others”, I would argue, is yet another loss of identity. To

avenge something is to inflict harm in return for a harm, so you cannot avenge without placing

some value in the harm done, much in the same way that you cannot be defiant without acting

because of what you are trying to defy. Making your identity be focused on avenging is still

making it be about what someone else did rather than on you. It’s an “identity” based entirely on
someone else, so it is not really an identity at all. Even more, if your actions are driven by

avenging then they cannot be original, as they will always be copies of someone else’s wrong

doings.

The other side of this argument is, of course, that if identity is not your group, or your

actions, or what has been done to you, then there is nothing left to try and craft an identity out of.

I think that that is actually the point. Out of all the things we define ourselves by, even in our

rebellion, none of them are identity. The problem is not even that we do not have any real sense

of identity. The problem is that we don’t even know where to start looking for one. If we found

it, I don’t know that we would know what we were looking at.
Journal #4

In Between The Sheets

In Ian McEwan’s “In Between the Sheets”, the narrator slowly becomes disillusioned

with the city and the performance of it all until he finally realizes that he is not exempt from

being a figurine on the beach. I think the loss of identity within the city comes not only from the

performance everyone there puts on, but from the way that the performance goes so far as to

destroy the ability for anyone to believe anything.

“For the first time in my life I found myself with urgent views on Christianity, on

violence, on America, on everything, and I demanded priority before my thoughts slipped away”

(149). I think that the use of the words “my thoughts” as opposed to “the thoughts” tells us about

the nature of the narrator. Using “my thoughts” implies that it is not just referring to his suddenly

formed opinions on these topics, but rather his thoughts in general. Considering that none of the

characters in the text demonstrate any personality or divergence from their archetype, I think that

it is fair to assume that even these half-baked approximations of beliefs are the first time they’ve

felt they have had thoughts of any importance, but even then those thoughts are exactly what is

expected of them. Everyone in the Psychopolis is trying to do their performance while retaining

identity as much as they can, but it is nothing but sand slipping between their fingers.

Even with these thoughts and with their urgent need to let them be known before there

are no more thoughts to let be known, before the individual is lost completely, I don’t think any

of them really believe what they are saying, as evidenced by when the narrator himself says “I

said yes and spoke at length without believing what I was saying” (127). The characters are all

trying to express their thoughts in order to have at least the pretense of self-actualization, but

they can never make it anything more than a pretense because, in reality, nothing about their
sentiments says anything about them. The urgency of the moment does not come from passion, it

comes from a desperate attempt to exist.

While this idea is dialed up for the story, it still holds true for us, especially as the internet

continues to grow. Everyone must have an opinion on everything all of the time, and all of it has

to be important. The irony of this is that, much like how the narrator did not have full or strong

beliefs in any of what he was saying by virtue of needing to create something to say on so many

topics at once, we too cannot really believe everything we say. As we are incapable of holding so

many true beliefs at once, we settle for saying all of the same arguments we have heard someone

else say and posting the same infographics while failing to do anything of value or think past the

surface about any of it. Even while the topics the characters argue about are more important than

some others, I don’t really think it matters what they were arguing about. The conversation

would have unfolded in the same way regardless of if the topics were phenomenally more inane.

This can be seen by even the smallest glance into the passing arguments we have today- wheels

vs doors, black and blue vs white and gold, etc. We all jump on the opportunity to get any sliver

of identity we can get, even if it is all the arguments of children. While I think what you believe,

outside of the more frivolous things, is probably a decent foundation for your identity, a real

identity, because it informs everything about what you experience, I think the ways in which we

“believe” now is another layer of our inability to have any identity. This is because none of it is

our own beliefs, they are all the beliefs of a group and are things we have heard before. You

cannot build an identity on a foundation of recycled thought.

The Psychopolis is not compatible with identity not only because of its nature as an

endless performance but also because it strips us of the ability for belief, which was the only real

thing left. Identity was destroyed from the outside in.

Synthesis

Jacques Ellul, Don Delillo, Ian McEwwan, and Rainer Maria Rilke all tackle different

aspects of the same issue. Whether it be how frivolous the sources of our identity are, our lack of

beliefs, or the unwillingness to separate ourselves from what is causing those issues, all of the

texts point to the same situation: trying to form an identity today is not possible when using the

tools we have created, and we are both unwilling and unable to do anything to solve that.

In White Noise, it is revealed that our fear of death comes, at least in part, from the fear

that it will go unnoticed. As animals that are conscious of our death for most of our lives, we

have spent so much time obsessing over it that we have given our lives value only because of

their relationships with death. We even identify with how we interact with death- you can be a

daredevil that sees how close you can get without succumbing, a health nut that tries to stave it

off as much as possible, a religious zealot that tries to come to terms with it, etc. Because of how

much value we have placed in death and how much we have identified with it, the fear of it,

especially of it not mattering, has only grown.

While White Noise shows that we identify too much with our deaths, “Imaginary

Biography” tells us that we have no idea what identity is or could be. We have been left

completely unable to figure out what our individual identity is without relying on our

relationship to others, even when we try to retaliate or separate ourselves. Identity was first taken

from us, and then, in our desire to push back, we make it even more impossible to form one

again.

The value of us being unable to form an individual identity separate from a group or from

society is discussed in Propaganda, where we learn that trying to separate ourselves from the

group or from what we are taught to do is so painful that we instead work to keep ourselves in.
Instead of resisting propaganda, we pretend that choosing the type of propaganda makes the

effect any different and instead identify with our choices, much in the same way that we identify

with how we cope with death but that does not change the fact that you will die.

The impact of the false choice between different flavors of propaganda is that we are no

longer able to believe in anything, as shown in “In Between the Sheets”. Ellul says we choose to

follow the line regardless of its consistency and instead will rewrite what we believe in order to

match what we are told (Ellul 19), which has led us to having strong “beliefs” on a million topics

but truly believing in nothing. We are stuck acting as we are supposed to, identifying with

nothing in any meaningful way, and believing nothing.

While death seems to be too big to write off as entirely meaningless, the other three texts

all show that the things we choose to identify with can only ever give us the illusion of identity.

This is especially true when you consider that we are searching for a sense of self, yet all of our

“identities” are reliant on a group. So long as the curtain is never pulled back, the concepts we

identify with seem to have varied levels of importance. It is hard for us to accept that, in the

grand scheme, a child’s rebellion against their parents, the curated videos shown on TikTok, and

your political ideologies are all equally worthless when searching for self-actualization. Even

death, which is one of the last pieces of the sublime out there, has been reduced to being of little

value because we have chosen to cope with it by further sorting ourselves into groups and

making our fear face more towards the lack of a standing ovation at the end of our performance.

The end result is a bit of a catch-22. We cannot handle our lack of identity, so we instead

keep ourselves firmly tuned into propaganda. We cannot handle that, when the end inevitably

comes, we will be left without any greater understanding of ourselves than we have ever had, so

we keep focusing on at least getting attention when it happens. We cannot handle the idea that
our resistance means nothing, so we continue trying to become the crusher and avenge ourselves.

The only way we know how to cope with the results of everything is by doing exactly what gave

us those result to begin with, and the cycle begins again.

It may be defeatist, but there is very little we can do to escape the loop we have become

caught in. As Dostoevsky’s Underground man says, “…Even if you had enough time and faith to

left to change yourself into something different, you probably would not wish to change; and

even if you did wish it, you would still not do anything, because in fact there is perhaps nothing

to change into” (8). The texts show us that we do not know what real identity is, much less how

to get it, and we are unwilling and incapable of doing anything that would help us in this regard.

In fact, it can be argued that, “there is perhaps nothing to change into” – at one point we may

have had a real individual identity, but that simply does not and cannot exist in the world we are

living in now. To create something else, to create an identity that has meaning, would take an act

of god we are not capable of doing when we are so deeply lost.