The Airborne Toxic Event

Both in real life and fiction disaster is pragmatic. In Don DeLillo’s novel White noise, part two talks about an airborne toxic event, also two months before his novel was published, a similar real event took place in Bhopal, India. This coincidence of events is magnificent in the sense that DeLillo could not have been able to edit his book, so late in the process, therefore these two events are very similar, by chance and maybe fate, in an attempt to better educate the public about the dangerous world we live in. A good similarity between the book and real event is that in both cases the calamity was caused by a railway accident, in which a rail tank had been faulty and leaked a poisonous gas in the air. “The radio said a tank car derailed I think it got rammed and something punched a hole in it.” The citation from the book demonstrates that the event was caused by a train accident, just as the one in Bhopal, India. Another similarity present in both writings is the time of year in which the disastrous events take place. In this quote of Newsweek magazine, the editor states the date of the accident and the similarity between the novel’s date of publishing: “When White Noise was first published in January 1985, many reviewers remarked that it reminded them of the Bhopal disaster, which had occurred on December 3, 1984.” This quote remarks the fact that in both instances, the events took place during the winter, which is important because during the winter, India experiences the winter monsoons, and in the novel the narrator mentions the winds coming down from Canada. These normal occurring weather phenomenons were disadvantageous in both cases since these winds carried the deadly toxin further, exposing more people to it. Another similarity present in both DeLillo’s novel and the Bhopal incident is the chaos, and insecurity caused by the spread of uncertain rumors from all people. “Rumors spread like brushfire.” This quote from Newsweek talks about all the crazy rumors going around at that time, about contaminations of food and so forth. This next quote is similar to the previous one because it talks about the rumors people were spreading in the novel about the airborne toxic event: “That was the Stovers, she said. They spoke directly with the weather center outside Glassboro. They’re not calling it a feathery plume anymore. What are they calling it? A black billowing cloud.” This quote relates to the other because people spread rumors from one to another, no matter the culture or education, it happens, and in dire situations, the rumors are mostly negative which then creates chaos, and that is not beneficiary in these kids of situations because when people panic they can’t think rationally, and therefore make clumsy mistakes putting others in danger. Just like in the novel when Jack and his family evacuated and were on the highway an accident happened, slowing the traffic down, making the people in the cars become exposed to the toxins. Therefore rumors are present in both the Bhopal incident and the airborne toxic event in the novel.

Even though there are many similarities between the two events, there are also differences. For example in Don DeLillo’s novel the event happened earlier during the day than in Bhopal. “At about 2 A.M., the pesticide factory’s siren went off.” This quote from Newsweek demonstrates that the event in Bhopal happened at a late hour, and in the novel the toxic event happened probably around five or six at night, since Jack wanted to eat dinner and Babbete considered it was too early. But the important thing to consider about these two differences in time is that the people in the novel had plenty of time to evacuate, listen to the radio and be informed and so on, but the people in Bhopal, were mostly all sleeping at that hour, and had no one to inform them, therefore