The Surprising Happy Ending of Infinite Jest

by silioso

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Part from when I was talking to my friend H, and part from lingering thoughts from the text, I couldn’t help but wonder if Hal’s inability to speak at the beginning (last scene temporally) of the novel comes from a form of learned helplessness. In my last post I mentioned the theme of Escaping, whether it be displayed in Infinite Jest, in DFW’s other works, or even in DFW’s biography, and can’t help but wonder if I was wrong, that it was not Escaping that I was seeing, but rather a sense of Asking For Help. I wrote previously about the Inner Infant scene, and admittedly I omitted discussing the group’s chanting of “Needs, Needs, Needs,” (808) because I couldn’t make anything of it; however, now I see that Hal’s ‘Need’ for help has been staring me in the face the whole time. Hannah brings up issues of Himself trying to bring Hal out and talk to him, but Himself doesn’t listen. I want to claim that Hal’s lack of being heard throughout growing up (with reference to scenes of Himself and Hal) creates learned helplessness for Hal, that in the first scene, Hal can’t talk. Or rather, that there is no way he can convey his message to his audience. Everything prior to this sentence was before I looked over the first chapter again. From the first time I read the first chapter, I felt that there was something significant that I kept over-looking and somehow it would be vital to the novel’s ending—especially having Pemulis expelled from ETA, and having Gately and Joelle’s plot unsatisfied, the novel seems to close with a dissatisfaction of the reader.

Now, I’m going to argue that the novel DOES satisfy our wants for Hal to get better—I don’t mean that he is perfectly well, but that he does have improvement. Pemulis asks Hal not to do AA because he has seen people crumble and fall apart to where they cannot function. This seemingly is reflected in chapter one, with emphasis on ‘seemingly’. However, C.T. tells us that ‘Hal here functions, you ass. Given a supportive situation. [—like Mario and Avril, even if Hal doesn’t like Avril’s unconditional love] He’s fine when he’s by himself. Yes he has some trouble with excitability in conversation.” (15) But first, the novel gives us Hal’s interiority during the interview. The stop-and-go dialogue in the interview, skipping and continuing through paragraphs, shows that the college interviewers plan to talk past Hal no matter what, they even talk past each other. Only C.T. can respond to the interviewers, this may suggest something about the adult/child divide in society. The first question directed at Hal does not even have a question mark: “Did we get all that right Hal.”(5) — this shows that the interviewers do not really care about Hal’s response. The exception is when the Athletic Affairs asks Hal if he is in pain, (5) which raises a lot of issues, such as: Why is the possibility of Pain the catalyst for the interviewers to warrant Hal’s response? At the end of that page, Hal confirms my suspicion that “[his] silent response to the expectant silence,” (5) merely displays the interviewers’ lack of respect for Hal.

In this first chapter, we see that Hal tries to speak, that his interiority reflects what he wants to say. Unfortunately, the sounds he makes when he finally speaks cannot be understood by the interviewers. There is an inkling of a cliché here: the issue isn’t being heard, you can be loud enough until you are, but you can’t make your audience understand you:— and that is what is going on with Hal in the interview. Hal wants to express himself and to be heard and be understood. He makes this explicit: “I’d tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear,” (9). Of a sort, the interviewers only hear what they want to hear. This has been the issue the entire novel, to not merely hear people, but to understand them. Hal acts as our guide in this first chapter. As we try to learn about him and understand him, we learn how to try to understand others. We have to remember that, “[he has] an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. [He’s] complex,” and this idea of individual complexity IS the heart of the novel. The novel (physically) begins with a declaration of presence with “I am” and “I am in here” (3). The narrator in this chapter, Hal, is in the novel. He is speaking to the reader, to us, saying that he knows he is a creation of the novel. Hal doesn’t exist outside of the novel. Just like meeting a future good friend for the first time, we want to know Hal’s past, and the end of the chapter has a hospital security guy asking for us, “So yo then man what’s your story?”

The entire novel is a direct result of that question. But while the guy asks Hal this , the emphasis on ‘your’ creates a notion that the guy (or rather the novel, or even DFW) is asking us what our individual stories are. And just as Hal is excitable by conversation, we are too. The novel becomes more than Hal’s story, it becomes the reader’s story. Irrefutably, the novel leaves the reader with an experience unlike anything s/he has ever had, and because the experience is so full of information, like our real lives, we can barely talk about it. So, just like Hal, we are crippled by wanting to say so much, by wanting to share. Just as Hal expresses, we are not merely what other people see and hear, we’re not (13). We too are complex.

To me, it seems that the novel screams Wallace’s famous saying: “Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being.” Days and years pass rather quickly, but we still look back on them, and when we tell our story, not only will it be a long story, but we, like the wraith — who acts as Wallace’s voice — can tell our story however we want, because we are the narrator. Also, when we tell our stories we naturally slow it down, just as the novel’s 1,079 pages slow down its story. The shortcomings of expectations and characters’ plots reflect real life, but ultimately, I feel that Wallace tries to show that it is okay to never be understood. After all, even after AA and after Hal’s attempt to talk (something that is a success), I feel that Hal will never be understood. But I argue that this is not another shortcoming, because Hal’s pain that soaks the rest of the book seems to be practically gone. Hal is actually quite … light-hearted, despite his inability to be understood and his ride to the hospital, and in this light, Hal becomes a role-model for us — he asks for help, he tries to understand his surroundings, he confesses his pains even if he only can confess them when he is clipping his toenails, and he loves his family — the sincere Mario, the disconnected Orin, the overbearing Moms, and especially Himself — regardless of how they act.