| Chapter 1: | Shopping for its Own Sake: Don Delillo's System of Objects |
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“only has to make us believe it exists to be an effective myth” (193). Similarly, consumption itself is a myth or, more accurately, the myth of contemporary society insofar as it is an endlessly repeated idea that has gained the force of common sense and has become the “morality of modernity” (194).
When a colleague publicly belittles his off-campus fashion sense in White Noise, Jack suddenly finds himself “in the mood to shop” and embraces the morality of modernity that Baudrillard describes (83). Gathering his family together after the confrontation, Jack heads for the mall where he “shops with reckless abandon” to meet “immediate needs and distant contingencies” (84). The character of his purchases, however, suggests that Jack's sense of immediate “need” has less to do with practical necessity than with nursing his fragile ego:
In addition to strengthening Jack's self-image, this shopping spree also strengthens his sense of belonging within his family. Thomas J. Ferraro notes in “Whole Families Shopping Together” that by shopping with his family, Jack “becomes ‘one’ with his family, which in turn achieves its ‘oneness’ through the activity of shopping” (22). Moreover, according to Ferraro, this passage demonstrates that the structure of Jack's family is itself grounded in consumption in that each of the Gladneys “knows his or her responsibilities, his or her