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Suicide in Infinite Jest
The issue of suicide becomes a major plot point in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Rather than simplifying the reasons behind self-demapping, Wallace instead obscures and complicates the issue through several different representations. Although the suicides take different forms and possible causes, generally they deal with addiction or depression.
The characters of Infinite Jest who choose to end their lives are revealed to be people with severe emotional and social problems. Wallace attempts to portray the event as realistically as possible. According to a wikipedia suicide article citing the World Health organization, " the predominant view of modern medicine is that suicide is a mental health concern, associated with psychological factors such as the difficulty of coping with depression, inescapable suffering or fear, or other mental disorders and pressures. A suicide attempt is sometimes interpreted as a "cry for help" and attention, or to express despair and the wish to escape, rather than a genuine intent to die" (link). Additionally, statistics reveal that mental disorders may account for up to 98% of suicides with mood disorder and addiction being the most common causes (link).
Although the motivations behind the suicides are generally not revealed outright (exception: Kate Gompert), they generally take on two types in the novel. Suicide becomes either an escape from the performance of life, or suicide takes on the essence of a performance in itself. While these performative suicides can be theatrical, they accomplish the same goal as those simple looking for an escape.
Suicide as Escape
One of the first instances we see of a suicide comes in the form of Kate Gompert. While little is actually revealed about Kate’s life outside of drugs and depression, she does give the reader somewhat of an understanding about the inner conflict that she is going through. This conflict becomes pronounced when Kate explains herself to the emergency room staff following her suicide attempt: "I wasn't trying to hurt myself. I was trying to kill myself. There's a difference" (Wallace 71). Hurting one's self denotes actually valuing the body. Pain and damage can heal. Kate's goal was a total death of her body and mind. The body has no value in her mindset. The mind brings pain, and ending consciousness is the only cure for her condition. For Kate, to be conscious is to feel pain. Kate relates that if a long coma was an option she would have chosen it, but suicide was more easily done. The brain must be taken out of equation. Her attempt has injured her body but not her mind. For her, the suicide is a total failure of her intentions.
Much later in the novel, Kate gives the reader more of an insight into a psychotic depressive’s mind: “the person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise” (Wallace 696). Delaying suicide for someone like Kate is equated to a matter of endurance. Suicide becomes simply a way to lessen pain. Kate's choice is either a life of excruciating mental pain, or a moment of quick bodily pain. For Kate, it is an escape route from a life deemed unbearable.
In opposition to Kate’s analogy of the burning building stands the story of the Lionel train hobbyist. While this character suffers pain similar to Gompert, he chooses never to contemplate suicide. While this character ends up in hospitals as well, it is only when he feels himself falling into a despair similar to Gompert's. Unlike Kate (who habitually uses marijuana and prescription meds p69-75), the Hobbyist seems to be actively seeking a solution to the problem. Gompert is amazed at his will: “The man’s case gave Kate the howling fantods. The idea of this man going to work and to mass and building miniaturized railroad networks day after day after day while feeling anything like what Kate Gompert felt in that ward was simply beyond her ability to imagine” (Wallace 697). Although similar, the man does not choose drugs or suicide as escapes. Furthermore, he continues to function and pray for salvation. This dedication to getting well draws obvious parallels to the A.A. ideology throughout Infinite Jest. He puts his faith in the idea that there is a cure for his disorder. Like real world ideas of depression, the Hobbyist copes with his depression through through hard work. Gompert copes with her psychotic depression through self-medication. As Wallace makes clear throughout the novel, drugs do not offer long term solutions. The Hobbyist delays suicide through strength of will. Kate seeks instant gratification for her problem while this man maintains in spite of everything.
Rather than drawing conclusions, or presenting a solid image of depression, Wallace leaves the issue complex and multilayered. In this respect, the novel seeps realism. Each case seems to present differently. Wallace refuses to provide answers, but simply presents several cases which are similar, but also display the instability in trying to develop hard definitions of abstract issues. Gompert's ideology is immediately fractured by the Hobbyist. Their cases are similar, but their reactions are quite different.
In complete opposition to both the case of Gompert and the Hobbyist, are the suicides of Joelle van Dyne, Eric Clipperton, and James O. (Himself) Incandenza. While Gompert and the Hobbyist seem less theatrical and more internalized, the successful suicide of Himself and Eric Clipperton, and the attempt by Joelle are spectacles in themselves.
Suicide as Spectacle
Suicide becomes performance when it is carried out by Joelle, Himself, and tennis "ace" Eric Clipperton. Etymologically, a spectacle is something "specially prepared or arranged display" (Link). Rather than living within their pain and killing themselves in privacy, these three suicides are purposefully designed to be unusual and memorable. While these suicide are likely influenced by mood disorder and other issues, the method through which the characters choose to end their lives makes them more traumatic to witness.
In the case of James O. Incandenza, the reader is only given a secondhand account of the event. Starting on p250, Hal relates the details of Himself's suicide to his brother Orin. Always a man of spectacle, Himself rigs a microwave to heat and explode his head: "as we later reconstructed the scene, he’d used a wide-bit drill and small hacksaw to make a head-sized hole in the oven door, then when he’d gotten his head in he’d carefully packed the extra space around his neck with wadded-up aluminum foil…and there was a large and half-full bottle of Wild Turkey found on the counter not far away” (Wallace 250). It seems hard to imagine a more traumatic scene for a young child to walk in on. While James may not have planned on his child being the primary audience, he undoubtedly wanted someone to see his final work. It was meant to be viewed like everything else he has created. The technological aspect and the presence of alcohol are important aspects of the spectacle as well. Himself was a man well versed in technology in general. He utilized it for many of his cinematic works. The fact that he used technology to aid his death continued his tradition of creating a performance with tools. The alcohol present pays homage to his history of addiction. Furthermore, it once again adds a note of realism given the connection between the statistical link between substance abuse and suicide. In this case, the successful suicide is almost an abridged history of his life. It has his alcohol and his ingenuity all rolled into one terrible package.
Joelle van Dyne follows the lead of her close friend James in her suicide attempt (Wallace 236). Joelle van Dyne, or Madame Psychosis ( or possibly Lucille Duquette) also chooses a theatrical form of suicide when she chooses to demap herself at her friend Molly Notkin's party. Rather than killing herself under the train tracks, or in the privacy of her home, Joelle chooses to end her life at social gathering. Like Himself, she plans her suicide meticulously: “She’s been resourceful before, but this is the most deliberate Joelle has been able to be about it in something like a year. From the purse she removed the plastic Pepsi container, a box of wooden matches kept dry in a resealable baggie, two little thick glycerine bags each holding four grams of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine, a single-edge razor blade…(Wallace 236). Unlike Himself, Joelle seems to perhaps only want to hurt herself as the suicide takes place in a very public place. Although she cooks a lethal amount of cocaine, described as "Too Much Fun for anyone mortal to hope to endure,"(Wallace 238) Joelle carries this out in area she can easily be found. Before she begins to free base cocaine, there is even knocking at the door. This form of spectacle enables her the chance of resuscitation unlike Himself. She wants to be seen, and she wants to be saved. Her suicide preparation represents the "cry for help" described by the medical community. She is in a state of despair: "Did she kill him, somehow, just inclining veilless over that lens?" (Wallace 231). She holds unresolved feelings about James' suicide; however, she does not seem fully committed to the demapping. She wants her pain to be witnessed by those around her. She wants them to empathize with her despair.
A character who seems to exemplify both aspects of these other suicides is Eric Clipperton. Clipperton is a junior tennis player who vows to demap himself if he ever loses a match. His technique is successful as he quickly dispatches all opponents as no player wants to be responsible for his suicide: “the legend’s story goes, Eric Clipperton never henceforth loses. No one is willing to beat him and risk going through life with the sight of the Glock going off on his conscience” (Wallace 409). His wins, however, are not ranked as officials are well aware of his strategy. He is very much a theatrical person as well: he carries his Glock as he plays the game. When the O.N.A.N. reorganizes, new rankings place him at the top of junior tennis players. Rather than revel in his success, he chooses to kill himself in front of Mario Incandenza and Himself. His suicide is utilized by Schtitt as a validation of the value of hardwork in tennis:
“when an E.T.A. jr. whinges too loudly about some tennis-connected vicissitude or hardship or something, he’s invited to go chill for a bit in the Clipperton Suite, to maybe meditate on some of the other ways to succeed besides votaried self-transcendence and guy-sucking-in and hard daily slogging toward a distant goal you can then maybe, if you get there, live with” (434).
Like Joelle, his suicide, and the lead up, have a very public aspect. However, unlike Joelle, he is dedicated to ending his life. He does so in front of people, but it is a very private setting. This is similar to James' suicide. Both were eccentric, and the E.T.A.'s understanding of James' suicide seems similar to school's take on Clipperton's:
[the jrs.] assume that Himself offed himself because he had achieved success and still wasn’t satisfied. The narrator outright tells us that this symbolizes the internal characteristics of these junior tennis prodigies. They assume that one must achieve some type of goal before a homeostasis can be achieved: 'the idea that achievement doesn’t automatically confer interior worth is, to them, still, at this age, an abstraction, rather like the prospect of their own death'" (link).
The narrator reveals that James did not demap himself for his inability to deal with success. One can infer that perhaps Clipperton is similar. He lived his life as a spectacle, and his death was one as well. Like James, he committed suicide soon after he began to peak, and it was a very intimate suicide. Violent, but relatively private. Clipperton's audience are people who are relative strangers. While this seems incongruous to James being discovered by his son, one must remember that James was largely a stranger to everyone: even his family. Their suicides provide the graphic image of the suicide, but without the "cry for help" aspect of Joelle. They wanted to die. Their reasons are their own.
Suicide and the Novel
Trying to draw a solid concept of how all of these suicides coincide is problematic at best. Does one type of suicide deserve more sympathy than another? Is one suicide more jarring than another? That concept seems too simplistic for Infinite Jest. In the work, Wallace presents a diverse grouping of suicides that seems to cover the whole range of suicidal causes listed by the World Health Organization (link). Coping issues, pressure, addiction,desire for attention, and suffering are all listed as potential causes for one choosing death. Furthermore, Wallace seems to not pass an explicit judgment on any of the characters who choose to commit the act. Rather than to stigmatize the act, the narrative tends to relate it rather casually. Realism seems to be a key goal in the portrayal of these acts. Basically, they happen. Three thousand people commit suicide daily (link).People are scarred by finding their dead friends and family everyday as well. Regardless of the method, the result is the same: pain. In the end, whether the act is escape or spectacle the people left behind will be left with only questions and little understanding. This lack of understanding is very much apparent in the Incandenza family's own ignorance in James' death. Suicide becomes the result when happiness cannot be attained. Whether this comes from failure, chemical dependence, mood disorder, or anything else makes little difference. In many ways, suicide is treated with the same respect that addiction is. The urge to kill one's self bears many parallels to Gately's spider (Wallace 357). Gompert exemplifies this view. It lives inside and eats away at you. The Hobbyist fights it. Gompert tries to pacify it. Joelle dances with it. Clipperton and James succumb to it. It is a struggle that can be battled, but cannot be understood from those on the outside. Gompert's doctor represents this (Wallace 73). He doesn't understand the feeling: he can't. Despite the pain, Wallace acknowledges the power to overcome this disease, but some cannot. It appears that depression and suicide tie into issues of freedom very much like Marathe describes it:
“Your freedom is the freedom-from: no one tells your precious individual U.S.A. selves what they must do…But what about freedom-to? Not just free-from. Not all compulsion comes from without. You pretend not to see this. What of freedom-to. How for the person to freely choose? How to choose any but a child's greedy choices if there is no loving-filled father to guide, inform,teach the person how to choose? How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose?” (Wallace 320).
Marathe touches upon some interesting concepts. However, his attention to the role of the father may be too simplistic. The father can be anything. The father can be the mind, religion, friends, or family. One can overcome their own inner demons by choosing to fight rather than going quietly: the Hobbyist lives this choice. However, many do not realize their ability to cope and are taken over. They fall victim to the disease. How they succumb is relatively unimportant (whether privately or publicly/ quietly or violently). The loss of the battle is the important aspect. However, it becomes apparent that these people are not reduced to merely weak characters. Weakness actually has little to do with it. Wallace does not pass judgment on their inability to choose their own fate. The causes of suicide are common problems that manifest differently for diverse people. It is an issue Wallace and the reader cannot fully understand, or pretend to. One can only hope to avoid the same fate, and hopefully achieve some form of genuine happiness through a constant grind against the compulsions within.
Works Cited:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=spectacle&searchmode=none
http://www.euro.who.int/document/MNH/ebrief07.pdf
http://timesnine.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/blog-post6-simple-melancholy/
Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/annual/world_suicide_prevention_day/en/index.html
The characters of Infinite Jest who choose to end their lives are revealed to be people with severe emotional and social problems. Wallace attempts to portray the event as realistically as possible. According to a wikipedia suicide article citing the World Health organization, " the predominant view of modern medicine is that suicide is a mental health concern, associated with psychological factors such as the difficulty of coping with depression, inescapable suffering or fear, or other mental disorders and pressures. A suicide attempt is sometimes interpreted as a "cry for help" and attention, or to express despair and the wish to escape, rather than a genuine intent to die" (link). Additionally, statistics reveal that mental disorders may account for up to 98% of suicides with mood disorder and addiction being the most common causes (link).
Although the motivations behind the suicides are generally not revealed outright (exception: Kate Gompert), they generally take on two types in the novel. Suicide becomes either an escape from the performance of life, or suicide takes on the essence of a performance in itself. While these performative suicides can be theatrical, they accomplish the same goal as those simple looking for an escape.
Suicide as Escape
One of the first instances we see of a suicide comes in the form of Kate Gompert. While little is actually revealed about Kate’s life outside of drugs and depression, she does give the reader somewhat of an understanding about the inner conflict that she is going through. This conflict becomes pronounced when Kate explains herself to the emergency room staff following her suicide attempt: "I wasn't trying to hurt myself. I was trying to kill myself. There's a difference" (Wallace 71). Hurting one's self denotes actually valuing the body. Pain and damage can heal. Kate's goal was a total death of her body and mind. The body has no value in her mindset. The mind brings pain, and ending consciousness is the only cure for her condition. For Kate, to be conscious is to feel pain. Kate relates that if a long coma was an option she would have chosen it, but suicide was more easily done. The brain must be taken out of equation. Her attempt has injured her body but not her mind. For her, the suicide is a total failure of her intentions.
Much later in the novel, Kate gives the reader more of an insight into a psychotic depressive’s mind: “the person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise” (Wallace 696). Delaying suicide for someone like Kate is equated to a matter of endurance. Suicide becomes simply a way to lessen pain. Kate's choice is either a life of excruciating mental pain, or a moment of quick bodily pain. For Kate, it is an escape route from a life deemed unbearable.
In opposition to Kate’s analogy of the burning building stands the story of the Lionel train hobbyist. While this character suffers pain similar to Gompert, he chooses never to contemplate suicide. While this character ends up in hospitals as well, it is only when he feels himself falling into a despair similar to Gompert's. Unlike Kate (who habitually uses marijuana and prescription meds p69-75), the Hobbyist seems to be actively seeking a solution to the problem. Gompert is amazed at his will: “The man’s case gave Kate the howling fantods. The idea of this man going to work and to mass and building miniaturized railroad networks day after day after day while feeling anything like what Kate Gompert felt in that ward was simply beyond her ability to imagine” (Wallace 697). Although similar, the man does not choose drugs or suicide as escapes. Furthermore, he continues to function and pray for salvation. This dedication to getting well draws obvious parallels to the A.A. ideology throughout Infinite Jest. He puts his faith in the idea that there is a cure for his disorder. Like real world ideas of depression, the Hobbyist copes with his depression through through hard work. Gompert copes with her psychotic depression through self-medication. As Wallace makes clear throughout the novel, drugs do not offer long term solutions. The Hobbyist delays suicide through strength of will. Kate seeks instant gratification for her problem while this man maintains in spite of everything.
Rather than drawing conclusions, or presenting a solid image of depression, Wallace leaves the issue complex and multilayered. In this respect, the novel seeps realism. Each case seems to present differently. Wallace refuses to provide answers, but simply presents several cases which are similar, but also display the instability in trying to develop hard definitions of abstract issues. Gompert's ideology is immediately fractured by the Hobbyist. Their cases are similar, but their reactions are quite different.
In complete opposition to both the case of Gompert and the Hobbyist, are the suicides of Joelle van Dyne, Eric Clipperton, and James O. (Himself) Incandenza. While Gompert and the Hobbyist seem less theatrical and more internalized, the successful suicide of Himself and Eric Clipperton, and the attempt by Joelle are spectacles in themselves.
Suicide as Spectacle
Suicide becomes performance when it is carried out by Joelle, Himself, and tennis "ace" Eric Clipperton. Etymologically, a spectacle is something "specially prepared or arranged display" (Link). Rather than living within their pain and killing themselves in privacy, these three suicides are purposefully designed to be unusual and memorable. While these suicide are likely influenced by mood disorder and other issues, the method through which the characters choose to end their lives makes them more traumatic to witness.
In the case of James O. Incandenza, the reader is only given a secondhand account of the event. Starting on p250, Hal relates the details of Himself's suicide to his brother Orin. Always a man of spectacle, Himself rigs a microwave to heat and explode his head: "as we later reconstructed the scene, he’d used a wide-bit drill and small hacksaw to make a head-sized hole in the oven door, then when he’d gotten his head in he’d carefully packed the extra space around his neck with wadded-up aluminum foil…and there was a large and half-full bottle of Wild Turkey found on the counter not far away” (Wallace 250). It seems hard to imagine a more traumatic scene for a young child to walk in on. While James may not have planned on his child being the primary audience, he undoubtedly wanted someone to see his final work. It was meant to be viewed like everything else he has created. The technological aspect and the presence of alcohol are important aspects of the spectacle as well. Himself was a man well versed in technology in general. He utilized it for many of his cinematic works. The fact that he used technology to aid his death continued his tradition of creating a performance with tools. The alcohol present pays homage to his history of addiction. Furthermore, it once again adds a note of realism given the connection between the statistical link between substance abuse and suicide. In this case, the successful suicide is almost an abridged history of his life. It has his alcohol and his ingenuity all rolled into one terrible package.
Joelle van Dyne follows the lead of her close friend James in her suicide attempt (Wallace 236). Joelle van Dyne, or Madame Psychosis ( or possibly Lucille Duquette) also chooses a theatrical form of suicide when she chooses to demap herself at her friend Molly Notkin's party. Rather than killing herself under the train tracks, or in the privacy of her home, Joelle chooses to end her life at social gathering. Like Himself, she plans her suicide meticulously: “She’s been resourceful before, but this is the most deliberate Joelle has been able to be about it in something like a year. From the purse she removed the plastic Pepsi container, a box of wooden matches kept dry in a resealable baggie, two little thick glycerine bags each holding four grams of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine, a single-edge razor blade…(Wallace 236). Unlike Himself, Joelle seems to perhaps only want to hurt herself as the suicide takes place in a very public place. Although she cooks a lethal amount of cocaine, described as "Too Much Fun for anyone mortal to hope to endure,"(Wallace 238) Joelle carries this out in area she can easily be found. Before she begins to free base cocaine, there is even knocking at the door. This form of spectacle enables her the chance of resuscitation unlike Himself. She wants to be seen, and she wants to be saved. Her suicide preparation represents the "cry for help" described by the medical community. She is in a state of despair: "Did she kill him, somehow, just inclining veilless over that lens?" (Wallace 231). She holds unresolved feelings about James' suicide; however, she does not seem fully committed to the demapping. She wants her pain to be witnessed by those around her. She wants them to empathize with her despair.
A character who seems to exemplify both aspects of these other suicides is Eric Clipperton. Clipperton is a junior tennis player who vows to demap himself if he ever loses a match. His technique is successful as he quickly dispatches all opponents as no player wants to be responsible for his suicide: “the legend’s story goes, Eric Clipperton never henceforth loses. No one is willing to beat him and risk going through life with the sight of the Glock going off on his conscience” (Wallace 409). His wins, however, are not ranked as officials are well aware of his strategy. He is very much a theatrical person as well: he carries his Glock as he plays the game. When the O.N.A.N. reorganizes, new rankings place him at the top of junior tennis players. Rather than revel in his success, he chooses to kill himself in front of Mario Incandenza and Himself. His suicide is utilized by Schtitt as a validation of the value of hardwork in tennis:
“when an E.T.A. jr. whinges too loudly about some tennis-connected vicissitude or hardship or something, he’s invited to go chill for a bit in the Clipperton Suite, to maybe meditate on some of the other ways to succeed besides votaried self-transcendence and guy-sucking-in and hard daily slogging toward a distant goal you can then maybe, if you get there, live with” (434).
Like Joelle, his suicide, and the lead up, have a very public aspect. However, unlike Joelle, he is dedicated to ending his life. He does so in front of people, but it is a very private setting. This is similar to James' suicide. Both were eccentric, and the E.T.A.'s understanding of James' suicide seems similar to school's take on Clipperton's:
[the jrs.] assume that Himself offed himself because he had achieved success and still wasn’t satisfied. The narrator outright tells us that this symbolizes the internal characteristics of these junior tennis prodigies. They assume that one must achieve some type of goal before a homeostasis can be achieved: 'the idea that achievement doesn’t automatically confer interior worth is, to them, still, at this age, an abstraction, rather like the prospect of their own death'" (link).
The narrator reveals that James did not demap himself for his inability to deal with success. One can infer that perhaps Clipperton is similar. He lived his life as a spectacle, and his death was one as well. Like James, he committed suicide soon after he began to peak, and it was a very intimate suicide. Violent, but relatively private. Clipperton's audience are people who are relative strangers. While this seems incongruous to James being discovered by his son, one must remember that James was largely a stranger to everyone: even his family. Their suicides provide the graphic image of the suicide, but without the "cry for help" aspect of Joelle. They wanted to die. Their reasons are their own.
Suicide and the Novel
Trying to draw a solid concept of how all of these suicides coincide is problematic at best. Does one type of suicide deserve more sympathy than another? Is one suicide more jarring than another? That concept seems too simplistic for Infinite Jest. In the work, Wallace presents a diverse grouping of suicides that seems to cover the whole range of suicidal causes listed by the World Health Organization (link). Coping issues, pressure, addiction,desire for attention, and suffering are all listed as potential causes for one choosing death. Furthermore, Wallace seems to not pass an explicit judgment on any of the characters who choose to commit the act. Rather than to stigmatize the act, the narrative tends to relate it rather casually. Realism seems to be a key goal in the portrayal of these acts. Basically, they happen. Three thousand people commit suicide daily (link).People are scarred by finding their dead friends and family everyday as well. Regardless of the method, the result is the same: pain. In the end, whether the act is escape or spectacle the people left behind will be left with only questions and little understanding. This lack of understanding is very much apparent in the Incandenza family's own ignorance in James' death. Suicide becomes the result when happiness cannot be attained. Whether this comes from failure, chemical dependence, mood disorder, or anything else makes little difference. In many ways, suicide is treated with the same respect that addiction is. The urge to kill one's self bears many parallels to Gately's spider (Wallace 357). Gompert exemplifies this view. It lives inside and eats away at you. The Hobbyist fights it. Gompert tries to pacify it. Joelle dances with it. Clipperton and James succumb to it. It is a struggle that can be battled, but cannot be understood from those on the outside. Gompert's doctor represents this (Wallace 73). He doesn't understand the feeling: he can't. Despite the pain, Wallace acknowledges the power to overcome this disease, but some cannot. It appears that depression and suicide tie into issues of freedom very much like Marathe describes it:
“Your freedom is the freedom-from: no one tells your precious individual U.S.A. selves what they must do…But what about freedom-to? Not just free-from. Not all compulsion comes from without. You pretend not to see this. What of freedom-to. How for the person to freely choose? How to choose any but a child's greedy choices if there is no loving-filled father to guide, inform,teach the person how to choose? How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose?” (Wallace 320).
Marathe touches upon some interesting concepts. However, his attention to the role of the father may be too simplistic. The father can be anything. The father can be the mind, religion, friends, or family. One can overcome their own inner demons by choosing to fight rather than going quietly: the Hobbyist lives this choice. However, many do not realize their ability to cope and are taken over. They fall victim to the disease. How they succumb is relatively unimportant (whether privately or publicly/ quietly or violently). The loss of the battle is the important aspect. However, it becomes apparent that these people are not reduced to merely weak characters. Weakness actually has little to do with it. Wallace does not pass judgment on their inability to choose their own fate. The causes of suicide are common problems that manifest differently for diverse people. It is an issue Wallace and the reader cannot fully understand, or pretend to. One can only hope to avoid the same fate, and hopefully achieve some form of genuine happiness through a constant grind against the compulsions within.
Works Cited:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=spectacle&searchmode=none
http://www.euro.who.int/document/MNH/ebrief07.pdf
http://timesnine.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/blog-post6-simple-melancholy/
Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/annual/world_suicide_prevention_day/en/index.html
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Latest page update: made by LCortina
, Aug 20 2009, 4:04 PM EDT
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About This Update
Edited by LCortina
2 words added 1 word deleted view changes - complete history) |
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Keyword tags:
drug abuse
Eric Clipperton
Himself
Kate Gompert
Madame psychosis
suicide
More Info: links to this page
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| daniellesely | Suicide and the Map: Part 3 | 0 | Aug 21 2009, 2:16 PM EDT by daniellesely | ||
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Thread started: Aug 21 2009, 2:16 PM EDT
Watch
So I see these three characters as outsiders in an already chaotic American community. They are simply trying to break the pattern of living inside their own heads. They can't find control over their lives in a community of chaos so they seek a way out. They live in a community all by themselves and cannot relate logically or civilly to the people around them.
In a weird way this takes the guilt usually associated with suicide away from these characters. After all, the American society is depicted as the burning building. These characters have one choice, get sucked up into the society of chaos, or jump, eliminate their association with the map by destroying both the map and the territory. Hal muses that some “people...[are] somehow burned at birth, withered or ablated way past anything like what might be fair, they either curl up in their fire, or else they rise” (316). |
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| daniellesely | Suicide and the Map: Part 2 | 0 | Aug 21 2009, 2:15 PM EDT by daniellesely | ||
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Thread started: Aug 21 2009, 2:15 PM EDT
Watch
It seems to me that Wallace sets up many characters like Gentle who attempt to exist in their own head, or their own imagined idea of a community. This ends up being the self-centered ideology of America. Or rather, as Lyle likes to say they “pull too much weight.” When Gately thinks about Death in his hospital bed he describes it as “a voice that sounded like his own brain-voice with and echo said to never try to pull a weight that exceeds you. [Death] wasn’t cam and peaceful like alleged. It was more like trying to pull something heavier than you” (973). The fact that Gentle is given the responsibility to pull the weight of America implies a pretty disastrous future for its citizens and it’s no wonder that many characters wish to commit suicide rather than stay a part of this society.
Characters like Kate Gompert, Himself, and Clipperton cannot see past the psychic pain they are experiencing in their head. However, as Louis points out in the case of Himself, his suicide was not a self-centered act. The novel directly states that he did not kill himself because he had attained his final achievement and could not conceive of how to go on. Although the novel does not ever give a specific reason, Wallace is careful to align Himself's logic against the logic Gentle used as President. |
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| daniellesely | Suicide and the Map: Part 1 | 0 | Aug 21 2009, 2:15 PM EDT by daniellesely | ||
|
Thread started: Aug 21 2009, 2:15 PM EDT
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The phrase “eliminate your map” in this novel means to be killed, or to commit suicide. During the Eschaton debacle Pemulis screams “you can only launch against the territory. Not against the map" (338) The logic that exists in the game Eschaton does not exist in the American society these characters live in. Eschaton is a game with "logic and axiom and mathematical probity and discipline and verity and order" (338). However, the politics that Gentle, the president employs is the complete opposite to the order and civility employed during Eschaton.
In order to fulfill his platform, which was to get rid of waste and blame America's problems on someone else, Gentle threatens Canada to accept their gift of territory or he will kill himself. Gentle threatens to eliminate his own map if Canada does not accept the Concavity as territory. It is important to point out that in the game of Eschaton, when Ingersoll launches against another player--the map, chaos ensues. The same goes for Gentle's politics. Gentle's idea to launch toxic waste against the map of not only Canadian soil, but American as well, throws the American society into chaos. |
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