Obsession --

"I watch her all the time doing things in measured sequence, skillfully, with seeming ease, unlike my former wives, who had a tendency to feel estranged from the objective world -- a self-absorbed and high-strung bunch, with ties to the intelligence community."(Delillo,6)
Here jack speaks about his beloved wife Babette you can visualize her warm easy going character which stands out to the reader’s mind. This shows a sense of ease that jack has for Babette that he’s never felt with the other wives. It kind releases him away from the tension and worry he feels constantly. Someone with more important things to think about than her appearance she brings something extra to the world, since she’s a teacher and takes care of the kids. I think Delillo is deliberately trying to tell us that this is what Jack’s been missing prior to Babette. She’s is also the other person that feels what he’s going through! In a way his confidant and emotional support, that he desperately seeks. Another way Babette bringing ease is by making the whole family watch TV together on Friday nights this kind of unity brings comfort in the room.

“He took pain to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history-- the very things, he says, that are most natural to him. Of these he has allowed only one element, vulnerability, to insert gradually into his program of straightforward lust. He is trying to develop a vulnerability that women will find attractive. He works at it consciously,..." (Delillo, 21) Jack is confused as a person which is evident in this scenario where he’s at the supermarket. His feelings of the world around him is what triggers him to avoid his pain into this make belief person that he’s become, which goes further into deeper anxiety that he always obsesses about. Dellilo is dealing with history by taping into peoples emotions! People’s emotions are a major part of history because their emotions change depending on what’s going on in their surrounding at that time. Which in jack’s case he is prone to pay attention to detail such as the frozen food aisle and brightly colored products. This goes further into his anxiety. This highlights his fear and it’s not something people generally obsess over.

“Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone”. (Delillo, 73) With this quote Jack illustrates how dying in a crowd saves you from dying alone. I think this is why he’s the chairman of Hitler studies because this gives him the opportunity to relate Hitler to death, where he invested in Hitler at the surface and seems more preoccupied with the cultural myths surrounding Hitler than in the historical facts about him. Delillo shows how Jack relies on Hitler’s larger then life persona to hide his own fragile sense of self-worth and self-identity, capitalizing on Hitler’s surface to build up his own.

Delillo sees history as ever changing moments and the same time discovering things that are already there. Through reflecting on these moments! Life is hectic, time is valuable before you know it your time is up.