Jest

“The U.S.A. of You” (MAJOR CONSTRUCTION ZONE) Rooted in a rich speculative backdrop, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is set in O.N.A.N, a interdependent North American state where what is currently known as America, Mexico, and Canada are one. Its acronym may allude to the biblical Onan, signifying this union of nations as a travesty of wasted potential (Hayles 685). It houses a world of cyclical addictions to drugs, overthinking, and entertainment at dangerous costs. Scholar Katherine Hayles

In his celebrated 1,079 page novel set at a tennis academy and addiction recovery house, David Foster Wallace borrows a phrase from Shakespeare’s Hamlet for the title, Infinite Jest. The allusion is grounded in the vital plot device also named ‘Infinite Jest,’ a necromantic film that engrosses the viewer to the point of catatonia and eventually death. The filmmaker is the character James O. Incandenza, who sought to produce a film so radically entertaining that it would affectively tear his son Hal

two separate entities, the internal and external, perception and reality. This theme manifests as the idea that the ‘other’ can influence the ‘self’, that society controls the individual. Wallace also explores the theme of self and other in Infinite Jest by contrasting the boundary between what goes on inside the characters’ heads and the outside world. Characters such as Millicent Kent feel a sense of loneliness in their own thoughts and consequently seek diversion in something other. Kent alludes

Everybody has people around them whether it be friends, colleagues, or family members that help them (or impede them) in their growth as a human being in society. It is no different for Rachel Cameron, the principal character in Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God. Throughout the text, Rachel has many people in her life that affect her in equally many ways. Three key people who alter Rachel’s character into the woman she is at the end of the book are her mother, Calla Mackie, and Nick Kazlik. Each of

founds the Enfield Tennis Academy and becomes a prolific film maker. But the chemical influence of depression and alcohol are overall instrumental in his final product. Addicted to the lure of death by depression and alcoholism, Jim creates Infinite Jest consisting of two of the things he finds fatally addictive: his mistress Joelle Van Dyne and

The Big Houses of The Old Jest and Good Behaviour were “first of all, big physically, in relation to the modest cottages…from the 18th century on, it was the center of wealth, power, and influence. These Big Houses were normally inhabited by Ascendancy families, Anglo-Irish blood, and Anglican faith” (Mortimer 209). In The Big House in Ireland, Seán O’Faoláin’s statement towards the Ascendancy sums up the attitude of this society “Ireland was their country, Ireland was never their nation…they were

Of all the novelists of the past 25 years, few have had such an aura surrounding their work, life and death as that of David Foster Wallace. His 1996 tome Infinite Jest has found itself on the book shelves of readers of serious adult fiction around the world, and his plethora of essays (which tackled everything from summer blockbusters, to sports, to pornography, to the concept of infinity) are still widely read and dissected in the literary world. In his lifetime, he reached a level of respect and

Infinite Jest page 100-200 starts out with Hal Incandenza and his friends in the locker room at the tennis academy. They talk about miscellaneous topics, but most is just usual stuff that teenage boys talk about. Although, one theme that I find in their conversations is unhappiness. Most of the boys seem exhausted, worn out, and just sick of being there. They go to the cartridge viewer room and start to question why they are even there, because the players on the viewers do not look too happy either

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London around 1342, though the details are vague at best, and lived until 1400. Little is known of his early education, but his works show that he could read French, Latin, and Italian, and as such was clearly very well educated, and it is also known that he spent much of his life close to the centres of English power because the first reports of Chaucer come from 1357 as a page in the household of Prince Lionel before he went to serve for Edward III in France, where

Generally, people have a team of peers, whether it be friends, colleagues, or family members that help (or impede) them in their growth as a human being in society. This is no different for Rachel Cameron, the principal character in Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God. Throughout the text, Rachel has many people in her life that affect her in many ways. Three key people who alter Rachel’s character into the woman she becomes at the end of the book are her mother, Calla Mackie, and Nick Kazlik. Each of them