White Noise Youth Quotes

Winnie the chemist has found a good reason to be proud to be American: because America bombards people with tons of flashing lights and sounds on a daily basis. According to Winnie, the human brain develops more in youth if it's given a lot of stimulation. That means all those commercials and flashing screens in your life are a good thing. That is, unless it actually turns out that those stimuli are forcing your brain to become numb.

Jack tries to tell Heinrich's friend Orest that he's crazy for wanting to set a world record for sitting in a room full of poisonous snakes. But Orest acts as though Jack's the crazy one for even questioning the importance of setting a world record. This exchange shows that there's a pretty big communication gap between parents like Jack and youths like Orest and Heinrich. For Jack, the main concern of life is to avoid death. For youths like Orest and Heinrich, the point is to do something great with your life, regardless of whether it's dangerous.

Eventually, Jack loses patience with Orest and tells the kid that he's going to die because he's an idiot. At this, Orest seems to hear what he's saying. Jack, though, is embarrassed by how worked up he's gotten. Heinrich and Orest are totally calm, while Jack's acting like a baby. Orest might even agree with Jack by the point, but that doesn't undo the fact that Jack is behaving like an infant in front of these two youths.