White Noise

by

Don DeLillo

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Babette’s father, who visits unannounced in the middle of the night and stays for several days. Vernon is a gruff man who appreciates manual labor and is highly intelligent in a more pragmatic, working class manner than the sorts of people Jack and Babette normally entertain. A man who likes to stay up late and wake up early, he insists on giving Jack a gun during a late-night conversation.

Vernon Dickey Quotes in White Noise

The White Noise quotes below are all either spoken by Vernon Dickey or refer to Vernon Dickey. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Fear, Death, and Control Theme Icon
).
Chapter 33 Quotes

He would be Death, or death’s errand-runner, a hollow-eyed technician from the plague era, from the era of inquisitions, endless wars, of bedlams and leporsariums. He would be an aphorist of last thing, giving me the barest glance—civilized, ironic—as he spoke his deft and stylish line about my journey out. I watched for a long time, waiting for him to move a hand. His stillness was commanding. I felt myself getting whiter by the second. What does it mean to become white? How does it feel to see Death in the flesh, come to gather you in? I was scared to the marrow. […] So much remained. Every word and thing a beadwork of bright creation. My own plain hand, crosshatched and whorled in a mesh of expressive lines, a life terrain, might itself be the object of a person’s study and wonder for years. A cosmology against the void.

Related Characters: Jack Gladney (speaker), Vernon Dickey
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire White Noise LitChart as a printable PDF.
White Noise PDF

Vernon Dickey Quotes in White Noise

The White Noise quotes below are all either spoken by Vernon Dickey or refer to Vernon Dickey. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Fear, Death, and Control Theme Icon
).
Chapter 33 Quotes

He would be Death, or death’s errand-runner, a hollow-eyed technician from the plague era, from the era of inquisitions, endless wars, of bedlams and leporsariums. He would be an aphorist of last thing, giving me the barest glance—civilized, ironic—as he spoke his deft and stylish line about my journey out. I watched for a long time, waiting for him to move a hand. His stillness was commanding. I felt myself getting whiter by the second. What does it mean to become white? How does it feel to see Death in the flesh, come to gather you in? I was scared to the marrow. […] So much remained. Every word and thing a beadwork of bright creation. My own plain hand, crosshatched and whorled in a mesh of expressive lines, a life terrain, might itself be the object of a person’s study and wonder for years. A cosmology against the void.

Related Characters: Jack Gladney (speaker), Vernon Dickey
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis: