95 pages • 3 hours read
David Foster WallaceInfinite Jest
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Cycle of Addiction and Rehabilitation
Addiction and rehabilitation appear frequently throughout Infinite Jest. Many of the young tennis players are addicted to drugs, while half of the story portrays the lives of people recovering in a rehabilitation center. Rather than being unusual or strange, addiction is a common fact of life for these characters. Drugs, alcohol, and a variety of other substances allow the characters to escape the crushing alienation of modern existence. The constant cycle of addiction and rehabilitation provides a template for the novel to describe and diagnose the ills of contemporary society. Everyone in the novel is addicted to something, and their struggles to deal with this addiction echo their struggles to survive.
Substance use is a constant issue for many of the characters. Don Gately is recovering from drug addiction, Joelle Van Dyne is ordered to a rehabilitation center after trying to kill herself with drugs, and Hal Incandenza is addicted to (and then struggles to give up) marijuana. Rather than these addictions defining the characters, however, the addictions become a shared bond. Joelle, like Don before her, discovers that talking about her addictions with others with the same experience helps her. Drug addiction is not unique. Rather than a shameful problem that needs to be hidden, characters are encouraged to be open and talk about their addiction. Mario, advising his brother on how to deal with addiction, suggests that he just needs to talk to someone. Hal seeks out this common humanity but attends the wrong group. The novel portrays the inner workings of rehabilitation to illustrate the social benefits of openness, sincerity, and honesty when confronting social problems, rather than hiding the problems in the style of James Incandenza.
The irony of the rehabilitation programs as portrayed in the novel is that they become an addiction for the recovering characters. Joelle describes her surprise that the treatment is working, but, as the narration suggests, she has replaced one addiction with another. When Don Gately is hospitalized, he worries that he will not be able to attend meetings. He will not be able to experience the emotional catharsis that has replaced drug addiction in his life. Without this emotional support, he fears that he will not be able to avoid relapsing. He has replaced the terrible, destructive drug addiction in his life with an addiction to the relief and release that he feels when helping himself and helping others. The portrayal of rehabilitation as another addiction, however, illustrates that the concept that addiction is not inherently immoral or bad. Drug addiction, as portrayed in the novel, is an escapist attempt to relieve the pressure and pain of modern existence; drug use almost always leads to terrible consequences, including Joelle’s suicide attempt, Michael Pemulis’s expulsion, Hal’s alienation, and Don’s involvement in a brutal murder. While an addiction to drugs causes suffering, an addiction to rehabilitation leads to happiness and relief. The characters may be caught in a loop of infinite rehab meetings, but their lives are better and more fulfilling as a result. Addiction itself is not necessarily the problem, depending on the nature of the addiction itself. An addiction to rehabilitation, ironically, becomes the way to treat any other addiction.
Irony, Corporatism, and Entertainment
The characters of Infinite Jest are consumed by entertainment, corporatism, and a desperate longing for sincerity in a world besotted with irony. The novel takes its title from a film made by James Incandenza that is so captivating that it has the potential to be a weapon of mass destruction. Referred to as the Entertainment, James’s film is a metaphor for the way in which the entire society has become obsessed with entertainment. Don describes how his stepfather obsessed over watching film cartridges and Hugh Steeply describes his father’s loosening grip on reality, caused by a popular television show M*A*S*H. James Incandenza’s film takes this obsession with entertainment to a terrifying endpoint, suggesting that society itself is caught in the hypnotic gaze of corporate entertainment and it cannot escape. Like the people who watch James’s film, society is slowly dying and willing to harm itself for the pleasure of watching just a little bit more of the entertainment.
Entertainment in Infinite Jest becomes divested from corporate interests. Once everybody is able to watch whatever they please at home, the corporations struggle with ways to reach people via advertising. Instead of limiting their corporate commercials to entertainment, their messages begin to seep into every available part of life. Each year has a corporate sponsor, cars are sold with sponsorships attached to the doors, and every available piece of physical real estate becomes an opportunity to advertise a corporate product. The characters internalize this rampant corporatism, happily referring to each year by its corporate name and taking part in the slow corporate takeover of the language they use every day. Given that society is addicted to entertainment, its members are more than willing to accept the growing corporate intrusion into every other part of their existence; they are so familiar with the traditional entertainment models that this becomes their new reality.
The pervasive nature of their corporatism and addiction to entertainment creates a sincerity problem in society. The characters are so familiar with media and irony that they can no longer form genuine social attachments to one another. They become alienated from society because society has become a giant form of entertainment. Like the viewers of James’s Incandenza’s film, the members of society are so enthralled with what they are watching that they forget to seek out sustenance. They only know how to speak in the self-reflective, self-aware ironic language of media consumption. Every commercial is ironically self-aware, so that the intrusion of commercials into their lives becomes an illustration of how much irony now dominates the society. If everything is ironic in the world of Infinite Jest, then sincere emotions provide an addictive relief from the crushing reality of modern life. As such, the rehabilitation meetings where people share painful, sincere memories become so popular because they are one of the last vestiges of life that is not poisoned by irony. The fatal cataclysm of ironic, corporatism, and entertainment drives the characters apart and motivates their search for sincere, substantive connections.
Circularity and Infinity
Characters in Infinite Jest are caught in constant loops from which they struggle to break free. Drug addiction is one such loop, in which the characters rob and steal to fund their substance use. Similarly, the youth tennis matches are a loop of performing the same actions in every game, set, and match every year to qualify for a nebulous and undefined future in the sport. The constant repetition and allusions to infinity are found in small details of characters’ lives. James Incandenza was fascinated by the topic and studied similar topics such as annulation when he was a physicist. Similarly, the Great Concavity is home to a series of constant toxic reactions that poison and infect the world but continue to be repeated because the society lacks the political will or energy to do anything about it. Instead, the government is caught in the repeated cycle of dumping more toxic waste into the region and then complaining about the damaging effects.
The idea of infinity in Infinite Jest is not just alluded to in the title. The structure of the novel encourages the audience to think about the chronological loops that are created. Don Gately’s memories and Hal Incandenza’s narration in the closing stages of the novel provide a necessary context for the opening scenes of the book. Infinite Jest begins with the end, in which Hal’s struggles with addiction and family cause him to have a mental health crisis while interviewing for college. His struggles to communicate are explained by the narrative that unfolds after this opening scene. In this sense, Hal is caught in the same cycle of repetition that affects the people who watch his father’s deadly film. Viewers of the Entertainment are so obsessed with watching the film again that they are willing to cut off their own fingers for the chance to start the viewing all over. The viewers, like Hal, are trapped in a circular loop that only brings them back to the beginning. Just as the viewers need to watch James Incandenza’s film from the beginning, the ending of Infinite Jest prompts the audience to begin the book again to gain a greater understanding.
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