Guide Mentor
Character Role Analysis
Murray Siskind
Whenever Jack's suffering from some crisis, Murray has a way of popping up and delivering an inspired rant about the meaning of life. The amount of times Murray just happens to run into Jack at the grocery store is bound to test the boundaries of believability. But hey, when Murray does show up, he has a way of summing up whatever DeLillo's trying to get at and just handing it to us. Props to Murray.
For example, Murray tells Jack at the end of the book that all of Jack's problems boil down to one thing: "You've said good-bye to everyone but yourself. How does a person say good-bye to himself? It's a juicy existential dilemma" (37.185). In other words, Jack's whole problem throughout this book is that he's been afraid of dying. Now that he's been exposed to toxic gas, he needs to accept that dying is part of being alive, and Murray's just the right guy to show him the way.