White Noise: Chapter 26 Summary & Analysis

In bed that night, Jack confronts Babette once more, this time refusing to be sidetracked. She reluctantly tells him that about a year and a half ago she started going through a phase that she thought would pass, but it eventually developed into a condition. Jack asks what the condition is, but she says, “Never mind that for now.” Throughout Babette’s explanation, Jack fluctuates between gently encouraging her (offering liqueurs and snacks to ease the process along) and bemoaning the fact that she has acted deceitfully—a complaint she refuses to hear, saying that this is her story and that he doesn’t have the right to overshadow it with his own problems.

Continuing with her story, Babette tells Jack that she went searching for a way to understand her problem, visiting libraries, reading magazines, watching TV, making lists and charts, calling scientists, visiting a Sikh holy man, and studying the occult. None of these things led her to any answers, so when she saw a tabloid ad that addressed her issue by calling for volunteers to partake in secret research, she eagerly answered. She refers to the company as Gray Research in order to protect the people she met. She calls her contact Mr. Gray—who, she tells Jack, is actually a composite of the many different people she was in touch with—and she says that she was interviewed as part of research into the field of psychobiology. Then she took a battery of psychological and physiological tests and was told she was a finalist to be a test subject in the development of Dylar.

Dylar, Babette tells Jack, has many related dangers and side effects. Mr. Gray told her that she could die, or perhaps one side of her brain could die while the other side went on living. She could also possibly lose her ability to interpret language, such that if somebody said “speeding bullet,” she would take the statement literally and duck for cover. Right as she was about to sign a contract and become a test subject, though, Gray Research backed out, saying that Dylar was too dangerous to test on human subjects. Feeling desperate, though, Babette made a deal with Mr. Gray (at this point in her narration to Jack, she begins to referring to Mr. Gray as one person, no longer a composite of multiple people). The only way she could convince this Mr. Gray to let her take the drug was to have sex with him on a regular basis. Upon hearing this, Jack feels a “sensation of warmth creeping up [his back] and radiating outward across [his] shoulders.”

Babette carries on with her explanation, informing Jack that she went to Mr. Gray’s seedy motel and had sex with him in exchange for Dylar. At this point in her narration, the radio randomly turns on because it has a broken auto-timer. When Jack tries to attain information about Mr. Gray, Babette sidesteps his questions, saying that it’s better if he knows as little as possible about the man. Finally, she reveals her condition: she is afraid to die, she tells him, weeping. Jack hates hearing this and even tries to talk her out of such an irrational fear, saying, “How can you be sure it is death you fear? Death is so vague. No one knows what it is, what it feels like or looks like.” But his skepticism doesn’t last long, and he eventually tells her that he is the one who fears death.

Dylar was designed, Babette explains, to eliminate the human fear of death. She tells Jack that she learned from Mr. Gray that “everything that goes on in your whole life is a result of molecules rushing around somewhere in your brain.” Jack recognizes in this statement the same logic by which Heinrich argues that humans are “the sum of [their] chemical impulses,” a sentiment he hates, calling it “unbearable to think about.” However, the Dylar appears to have not worked, because Babette still fears death. Apparently, her memory lapses have not been the side effect of Dylar, but rather a side effect of her fear. Mr. Gray told her that her memory loss is an “attempt to counteract” the fact that she is so afraid of death. Nonetheless, Dylar failed her. Knowing this, Mr. Gray apologized, telling her that he made a mistake and that she wasn’t the right subject for the test.

Jack takes this opportunity to tell Babette about his exposure to Nyodene D. and the possible harmful effects it had on him. Explaining the way the SIMUVAC technician entered his history into the computer and received an ominous report, Jack says that “we are the sum of our data, […] just as we are the sum total of our chemical impulses.” This news deeply upsets Babette, who climbs on top of Jack and sobs loudly into his face, shaking his head in her hands before eventually falling off his body and into a deep sleep. At this point, Jack creeps out of bed and goes to the bathroom, where he opens the radiator to find that the bottle of Dylar is gone.