It is interesting how all the mediums that we read and viewed this semester were trying to connect and sum up all the scenarios and storylines endings. Even though these authors strived to make the endings coherent and cohesive, there is still the factor many of these mediums remain unresolved and open-ended because of their complexity. In David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, in the ending section Wallace is trying to connect all the scenarios and storylines. He is trying to draw the reader deeper into these highly wrought addiction scenarios and make them supposedly interconnected and rational. However, they are anything but rational they are illogical and problematic. In the last section that we read, it appears that Don Gately has gone off the wagon and back to drinking and doing hard-core drugs. This section just kept rambling on. It just appears that Gately relapsed and he is conversing about not be able to attain the AA meetings or be the one that the other members of the White Flaggers confide to or relied on. Don Gatley‘s ghost refection, “The wraith says Just to give Gatley an idea, he the wraith, in order to appear as visible and interface with him, Gatley, he, the wraith has been sitting, still as a root, in the chair by Gately’s beside for the wraith-requivalent of three weeks, which, Gately can’t even imagine. It occurs to Gatley that none of the people that’ve dropped by to tell him their troubles has bothered to say how many days he’s even been in the Trauma wing now, or what day it’s going to be when the sun comes u, and so Gately has no idea how long he’s gone now without an AA meeting” (Wallace 836). Gatley has been drawn into back into the place were the dark demons of drugs and alcohol has taken over his life again. In this section, there are portions, which detailed Gatley’s childhood and what he had to endure and contend with growing up, and how Gatley’s father as well was addicted to drugs and alcohol. The reader observes how the dark spirits have taken over Gatley’s life.
The ending of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is gruesome. I keep on having visions and nightmares of eyes being stitched shut. This portion is revolting and disgusting. What is Wallace trying to do with this ending because it is apparent that Don Gately and some of the White Flaggers are only interesting in partying on hard-core drugs? Wallace even adds the dimension of two transversals. What is up with that? What is Wallace doing? As a reader I really was turned off by the description of the eyes being sown shut and the way that some of the White Flaggers held down Gatley and others an injected them with the “Sunshine drug,” (Wallace 979). Wallace states, “The last rotating sight was the chinks coming back through the door, holding big shiny squares of the room. As the floor wafted up and C’s grip finally gave, the last thing Gatley saw was an Oriental bearing down with the held square and he looked into the square and saw clearly a reflection of his own big square pale head with its eyes closing as the floor finally pounced” (981). I am not taken in by the ending. I am trying to make sense of what is happening. I do not observe any cohesiveness just broken down addicted characters. I agree with M B’s wiki in Infinite Summer. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is definitely fractured and structureless. It is apparent that none of the characters in David Forster Wallace’s cannot recover from their addictions.
Wallace does not tie up any loose ends and it definitely gave my brain a work-out to try to comprehend what happen. There is no cohesiveness and Wallace’s novel to me is just a long-winded scenario that is just plain wordy and frustrating. It is a tough and upsetting book to read. Wallace’s novel definitely sickens me, left me annoyed, and pissed me off.
I feel your frustration about the ending of this book, Susan. But, as you said, this entire semester we read and saw narratives that did not sum up all the scenarios and storylines endings. The complexities of these stories just make it not possible and more importantly, less realistic to give it a happy, cohesive ending. It can definitely be a torment to be stuck reading the entire thing, such as IJ or Enchantment only to find no real conclusion.
The characters in this story are victims to their demons and addictions and more often than not, they don’t recover and find their own cohesiveness, and I think that might be what Wallace wanted in his complex novel. It’s just really frustrating as a reader that we had to suffer with these characters and like them, find no closure or ending. But the book’s over now, on with our lives!
I hope the nightmares go away, soon!
[...] November 11, 2009 to Paula Wallace Just Might Have Something> 10)A) November 18, 2009 To Susan Fractured Novel 10)B) November 18, 2009 To Caitlin I still think he looks like Val Kilmer’s character [...]