On our “Socratic Walk” we briefly touched on the question if Murray was intentional in placing somewhat sinister, or what-have-you, thoughts into Jack’s head. I think that Murray is incredibly dynamic in his thought process and how he conveys them to Jack, which later makes Jack recall and ponder them in real depth. It makes Jack examine the validity of his own thought process as compared to someone else. It causes him actual worry and reflection on what conclusions their conversations have individually led them too. Obviously we do not see how these conversations affect Murray. I assume that he takes them somewhat at lighthearted banter but he is obviously mulling these thoughts over in his head anyways since he is so ready to bring them up in his conversations with Jack.
This makes you take a step back and realize the very real consequences of conversation and the real persuasion our expressed thoughts and feelings can have on another person. Undoubtedly many of the events in Mr. DeLillo’s book are fantastic and this element of real life, simple conversation, brings it back into the realm of “real”. I feel like we all carry the ghosts and memories, white noise, if you will, of past conversations within us and are able to recall on them from time to time when your mind deems appropriate. They all happened to be relevant to what Jack was thinking at the time, he mostly steered the conversations, but Murray provided a lot of significant input that opened Jack’s mind for a bunch of different avenues to think down.
Honestly, I’m not quite sure where I’m going with all of this. Conversation is an important part of our human interaction, as well as our introspective reflection. We are not always psychically connected to each other, but almost always orally. Input from someone else has sway over our thought processes. If someone else has influence over your thoughts, can you have influence over someone else’s thoughts? Almost undoubtedly. But you would never know, just as Jack and the reader have no idea what his mutual influence of thought and influence is over Murray.
Back to the beginning of the post: I believe that Murray had no intention of freaking Jack out. Jack was asking questions and Murray was pulling things out of his brain to tell Jack. No real intention of anything other than a Socratic walk and the inevitable aftermath of a conversation as always.
Interesting musings about the power of talk. Maybe one of the points of these Socratic Walks was to show Jack’s susceptibility to the power of suggestion — which is actually just as great as Denise and Steffie’s succumbing to the power of suggestion during the Airborne Toxic Event. Jack is swayed by charismatic speech, a hugely ironic fact considering he’s spent his life studying Hitler’s power over the masses. We are immune to our own knowledge, DeLillo seems to be saying.