white noise

The central conflict between Jack and Babette Gladney is basically the struggle for control and also the struggle for who is more afraid of death.
Jack Gladney throughout the whole novel tries to think that he knows his wife
Babette he tries to control her thoughts by saying she is supposed to act a certain way. Jack wants to be the one afraid of death and at the same time wants to get rid of his fear.
In the story Jack confronts Babette about the medicine she is taking, he wants to know what it is and why she is taking it. He tells her that if she doesn’t tell him the reasons that Denise will. Jack is very understanding and tells her to take her time telling him. Babette tells him that Gray Research was conducting human experiments on fear and then decided not to conduct them on humans but on computers. She told Jack how she made a deal with “Mr. Gray” and in exchange to continue with the experiment with Dylar (the drug) she would give him her body.
Jacks reaction to this was not the kind you’d expect when your wife is telling you she cheated on you. He was mostly calm, stayed laying in bed, and even offered Babette some Jell-O with banana slices that Steffie had made.
Jack went on asking why Babette needed this drug and what it’s purpose was. He wanted to know why they couldn’t test on animals. Babette answered,
“That’s just the point. No animal has this condition. This is a human condition.
Animals fear many things, Mr. Gray said. But their brains aren’t sophisticated enough to accommodate this particular state of mind.”(195)
Jack then was starting to realize what Babette was getting at. This is when the emotion kicks in for him. Now he feels all the emotions he was supposed to feel when she told him he cheated on him. He states, “My body went cold. I felt hollow inside.” (195) He was waiting for her answer. She tells him, “I’m afraid to die..I think about it all the time. It won’t go away.”(195) He responds with,
“Don’t tell me this, this is terrible.”
Jack’s reaction to Babette’s fear seems misplaced. He is more upset that she could possibly be more afraid of death than him than he seemed to be about her sleeping with Mr. Gray. He goes on trying to tell Babette that maybe she isn’t sure that she is afraid of death, “death is so vague.” He tries to tell her that it might be her weight or height that is her problem.