{"id":144,"date":"2008-09-13T23:46:41","date_gmt":"2008-09-14T03:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/?p=144"},"modified":"2008-09-13T23:46:41","modified_gmt":"2008-09-14T03:46:41","slug":"wilder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/archives\/144","title":{"rendered":"Wilder."},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost everyone in White Noise<\/em> speaks with the same diction regardless of age, or background – something that we’ve already discussed in class.\u00a0 Their voices are indistinguishable from one another from word to word, but their thoughts give them away in the who’s who game.\u00a0 Wilder is the only character who is not given direct dialogue.\u00a0 He has the ablility of some amount of speech, and there was the seven hour scream, but by and large he is silent.\u00a0 If the characters are a part of a larger commentary on the post-modern form and thoughts, then how does Wilder fit in?\u00a0 We touched briefly on his character at the end of class on Thursday, but it reminded me of the questions I have about his character.<\/p>\n

He’s treated delicately and with some degree of ambiguity.\u00a0 Is Wilder mentally impaired, or disabled in some way?\u00a0 The\u00a0reader isn’t given the answer explicitly.\u00a0 Jack says early on in the novel, “It occurred to me that he was too old and too big to be sitting in supermarket cars.\u00a0 I also wondered why his vocabulary seemed to be stalled at twenty-five words” (36).\u00a0 With this in mind, it can be inferred that something isn’t altogether right, but consider the source.\u00a0 Jack is not a realiable narrator and he briefly glides over occurances, just giving scant information, and then quickly moving onto the next thought, next activity.\u00a0 His narration lies in the shallows, and I think that lends some strength to the argument that the book is largely plotless.\u00a0 But I digress.<\/p>\n

Much like\u00a0 the kitchen and the bedroom are power haunts for Jack and Babette, it seems that Wilder could be lumped into that idea.\u00a0 He is in many ways a “source” for Jack and Babette.\u00a0 In their dealing with their overwhelming fear of death, Wilder is their source of comfort:<\/p>\n

I think it’s being with Wilder that picks me up.<\/p>\n

I know what you mean.\u00a0 I always feel good when I’m with Wilder (209).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are repeated references to Babette being with Wilder as he becomes her source of comfort.\u00a0 As he is probably dependent upon her, or because he is “selfish in a totally unbounded and natural way” (209), there is something about Wilder that his presence brings simplicity, or maybe a return to something more organic. (Hence the name Wilder.)\u00a0 But he allows characters to share in his wonderment of the world around him (watching boiling water in a sauce pan) and serves as\u00a0a counter within the\u00a0 Gladney mish-mashed family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost everyone in White Noise speaks with the same diction regardless of age, or background – something that we’ve already discussed in class.\u00a0 Their voices are indistinguishable from one another from word to word, but their thoughts give them away in the who’s who game.\u00a0 Wilder is the only character who is not given direct … Continue reading Wilder.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}