A Fear of Death

Don DeLillo uses the fear of death throughout White Noise to demonstrate the inescapable reality of fear we all face as humans. Jack and Babette's fears regarding death are taken to the extreme. Neither can seem to function without the fear haunting them to an extreme extent throughout their days. Babette is so afraid that she ends up taking an experimental drug meant to destroy the part of the human brain which creates the fear of death. Despite the terrifying and possibly fatal side effects (which is very ironic), Babette is so desperate to eliminate her fear that she will go to any length to absolve herself of it. Jack also suffers from his extreme fear of death. Almost every waking moment Jack wonders if he or Babette will die first, when he will die from his exposure to Nyodene Derivative, or about any other subject matter relating to death on some level. He wakes up in the middle of the night from sweating in his sleep, caused by his racking fear of death of course. Ironically enough, both Jack and Babette's extreme fear of death only brings them closer and closer to death itself. As I discussed in my analytical essay regarding death in White Noise, sunsets are used as a motif throughout the book to illustrate both the fear and awe simultaneously experienced within a human's existence. One fear being death and one example of awe being life itself. Without death, life is a series of monotonous and repetitive events and therefore it carries no meaning. But in the combination of life and death, or fear and awe, the brilliance of existence is recognized. As one of Jack's university co-workers explains, death is a boundary to life. The almost unbearably stunning sunsets after the Nyodene Derivative spill represent just that: the brilliance of existence found within the binary of life and death.
Personally, I recognize that death is a haunting fear, but I also realize that it is necessary to have a conclusion of sorts to life. Although the unknowns of death may be scary, being immortal would be torturous in my opinion. Watching everyone die around you and watching the earth rot, as well, would just be terrible. Life would have no meaning if one's life just continued to exist forever. One can choose to repress their fear, embrace their fear, or be paralyzed in their fear. As demonstrated in White Noise, being paralyzed in one's fear only seems to bring one closer to a morbid death and a meaningless life. Fearing death will not change death itself. Death will happen regardless, so why waste your life consumed in the anxieties of your fears? I say, embrace your life and do not let your fears define you.