At the heart of American culture rests an uncomfortable public, obsessed with gossip and death. Don DeLillo, the author of
Americana, The End Zone, and Cosmopolis magnifies the core of the American median – the suburban, lower middle-class public. He presents Jack Gladney, a college professor, and his fellow colleagues who teach in various pop-culture departments. Gladney teaches Hitler Studies in Middle America, his best friend, Maury, is a Jewish professor of "Elvis". Together they tackle the profundity of modern science and its near-religious effects on the ignorant public, the
mysterious pull of television commercials, and America’s obsession with catastrophic tragedy.
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Jack is a family man and soon
discovers, through the prodding concerns of his various children and stepchildren from previous marriages, that his wife is taking mysterious pills and refuses to account for their use. The ensuing investigation is put on halt, however, when a catastrophic chemical spill forces Jack and the community to rethink their I-know-it-could-happen-but-not-to-me mentality. Jack is forced into contact with the pollutant and is told by doctors and technicians, cryptically – evoking the public’s distrust of their "kind" – that Jack is going to die.
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Struggling with a newfound fear of eminent death and later realizing the fear to be familiar and in fact the reason for his seclusion in Middle America and preoccupation with Hitler, Jack eventually discovers his wife’s mysterious pills to be non other than an experimental medication for this very fear. Jack also discovers that his wife was tricked into indiscretions to obtain the dangerous, illegal medication. He finds the charlatan physician and sets out, himself unsure, either for revenge or to procure a dose of pills for his own nagging fear. That night Jack makes his ultimate discovery: the key to conquering death is holding its power over the life of another.