Treadwell, the blind man to whom she reads tabloids. Bob Pardee, Denise's father and a businessman, takes the kids out to dinner, and Jack drives Babette to Mr. Jack describes his awkward German lessons with Dunlop. Babette says isn't, or at least she doesn't remember taking anything. On the walk home, Jack suggests Babette is taking medication. He has concluded that the "waves and radiation" of television have become a "primal force" in the home. After dinner, the talk turns to television, and Murray says he's been taking notes on television for the past few months. That night, Jack and Babette have dinner at Murray's. Jack finds Heinrich strategizing chess moves in his room he plays with a convicted murderer by mail. In the kitchen, Denise refers to Babette's failing memory, but quickly drops the discussion. Murray invites the family to dinner next weekend. Tibetans see death as the end of attachments to things, he says, which is a hard thing for people to do, since they want to deny death. In the supermarket, Murray tells Babette that the Tibetans believe in a transitional state between death and rebirth that recharges the soul, and he thinks the supermarket does this in American culture. Jack asks her what medication this is, and Steffie tells him to ask Denise. Steffie tells Jack that Denise reads the Physicians' Desk Reference to find out the side effects of Babette's medication. Jack says that the grade school had to be evacuated and inspected for dangerous materials, as students were beset by a variety of health problems. Jack's numerous attempts to learn German have failed, but he has begun secret lessons (to prepare for hosting a major Hitler conference in the spring) with a man named Dunlop who lives in Murray's boarding house. Looking for pornography, Jack finds old photo albums instead, and he and Babette pore over them for hours. Jack says that he and Babette tell each other everything, except about fear of death. They finally decide that Babette will read him erotic literature. In bed, Jack and Babette discuss what to do sexually. and says that all plots move "deathward." He discusses "plots" - political, narrative, etc.
Jack lectures his class on the mass appeal of fascism. Jack drives Heinrich to school and they debate the rain Heinrich informs him that the radio said it was going to rain tonight, while Jack points out that it is already raining, and that they don't need to believe the radio over their own senses. The family orders Chinese food that Friday night and unhappily watches television together, a family ritual.
He says the question of who will die first sometimes arises in their conversation. Jack goes to the high school stadium and watches Babette run up and down the steps. Jack accompanies Murray to the country to "the most photographed barn in America." Jack is friends with Murray Jay Siskind, a Jewish visiting lecturer on "living icons." Murray wants to do with Elvis Presley what Jack has done with Hitler. Hitler studies shares a building with the popular culture department. He is the chairman and inventor of Hitler studies at the college. He walks into his quiet town of Blacksmith, where he lives with his wife, Babette, and their four children by previous marriages - infant Wilder, Denise, Steffie, and Heinrich. The narrator, Jack Gladney, describes the annual arrival of station wagons at his college, College-on-the-Hill.