White Noise Versions of Reality Quotes

So much for "Father Knows Best." Jack can't even get his son Heinrich to agree with him that it's raining outside. That's because Heinrich totally refuses to accept commonsense answers to simple questions. To be fair, Heinrich is being a little bit difficult here. But if you take what he's saying seriously, he makes a good point about how much the media (like TV and radio) conditions the way we look at reality. Let's not forget that later in the book, Jack won't evacuate their home after a toxic disaster because TV has taught him that disasters only happen to poor people in trailer homes. 

Jack gets right down to it here. When it comes to reality, we should trust what our eyes and ears tell us, not the radio. But this is more easily said than done. Throughout this book, the radio is always there, jabbering away. It's like there's no getting away from it in Jack's household. It's always inserting itself in conversations, and always warping what people see when they look outside.

Only a little later in the book, Steffie starts having fits of déjà vu after the radio told her that déjà vu is a possible symptom of toxic gas exposure. The funny thing is that the radio later says that déjà vu isn't a symptom, leaving us to wonder if the radio itself tricked Steffie into having déjà vu. The media can plays tricks on the mind in this book. 

Heinrich's a crafty kid, and he's good at dancing away from his father's hardline reasoning. For example, he shows his father that it's totally bogus to ever say that a certain thing is happening "now," because the present moment is over before you've even finished saying it.