The Call Of The Wild Jack Gladney Quotes

One of the main characters in the novel is Wilder, the youngest son of Babette, Jack Gladney’s wife. Wilder “Gladney immediately regains his self-control by submitting the experience to his media-habitualized rationality. Wilder, however, his little son, falls into a deep sadness. "Wilder approached the set and touched her [his mother's] body, leaving a handprint on the dusty surface of the screen. ... The small boy remained at the TV set, within inches of the dark screen, crying softly" (105). It is not by coincidence that this scene concludes the first part of the novel. As the story progresses, Wilder turns into a kind of contrast figure to the adults--the epitome of an otherwise lost spontaneity and naturalness” (Heller 2000).

deprived of the deeper codes and messages that mark his species’ (50) eventually fully develops into the quintessential antipode to his parents' death-ridden absurdity. ‘He doesn't realize he is going to die,’ Gladney says. ‘He doesn't know death at all. ... You want to get close to him, touch him, look at him, breathe him in. How lucky he is. A cloud of unknowing, an omnipotent little person. The child is everything, the adult nothing’ (289)” (Heller 2000). Jack Gladney and his wife wish they were as young as Wilder again. The parents envy the life and innocent nature of the boy, “...Wilder, is the only character who seems unaffected by this 'new-age' society. Wilder stands as the pinnacle of innocence and naivete--he has not yet been corrupted by his complex society. It is to his state that Jack and Babette wish they could return” (Rump) The boy is obvlious to the fact that he can die. At the end of the novel, DeLillo shows a scene of the boy crossing a major highway on a tricycle, after he passes a “dead end” on a “dead end street”

Jack becomes convinced that the Nyodene gas has ‘planted a death in [his] body’ (150); Steffie refuses to remove her gas mask for hours; and even Babette is forced to resort to the comfort of the tabloids (142). It is only Wilder who remains apparently unaffected by the occasion. He sleeps in Babette's arms during the drive to the shelter, immediately makes himself comfortable, and goes back to sleep once at the shelter; and during the second evacuation on the following day, he again is unperturbed: ‘Wilder was dressed, eating a cookie while he waited’ (156). Whilst all around him is awry, Wilder remains the personification of calm”