“From Romanticism to Modernism: Transitional Elements in Herman Melville’s, Billy Budd”

During the course of the 1800s, American Literature went through unprecedented changes; most of which were catalyzed by new social, political, technological, and philosophical revelations. These included advancements such as the Industrial Revolution, the political and social revolutions in both France and America, new discoveries in chemistry and physics, the debates over, and abolition of, slavery, the philosophy of rugged individualism and the promotion of self-will (Brooklyn College). Romanticism was the dominant form of artistic expression after the American Revolution, a time period which employed Realism as its primary form of artistic expression. As opposed to Realism’s strict adherence to observing very human-centric topics and narratives, Romanticism is the exploration of man’s position in regards to nature (Brooklyn College). The topics of Romanticism range from questions of morality and justice, to criticism of human progress, to nature’s sublime presence, and even as far as critiquing imperialism and general governmental/martial constructs by reminding us of the presence of nature (Brooklyn College). Herman Melville, born in 1819 to the owners of a small family business, grew up in a world where nature was portrayed as indifferent towards human will, and always more powerful than it (Haydock (2)). Throughout his life Melville was a working class American, and spent most of his years either as a writer, or a sailor (Haydock (2)). The influences of the culture at the time become apparent when looking at Melville’s canon as a whole. His books tend to explore themes of the sailor/working life, man versus an ever looming and threatening nature, and the roles and limits of good and evil (Haydock (1)). Melville’s Moby Dick is generally regarded, as Robert McCrum of The Guardian puts it, as the, “Source and the inspiration of everything that follows in the American literary canon,” (McCrum). Although this may be true, I also believe that Moby Dick is inherently inseparable from the most prevalent Romantic themes; namely those of the sublime, and of rigid, rugged individualism. I plan to argue that Melville’s final novel, Billy Budd, is able to operate both within the Romantic literary canon, while simultaneously transcending, and reshaping it. Short, succinct, challenging the cultural and artistic traditions of the time, while still remaining faithful to traditional ideas of the novel, Billy Budd represents the penultimate transitional piece of literature bridging Romanticism and prototypical Modernism.

Billy Budd is a novel of good and evil, of justice and injustice, and of the plight of the ‘Handsome Sailor,’ Billy Budd. The novel opens with a general explanation of the ship, the Bellipotent, and the sailors aboard. Captain Vere, the well-educated, artistic, shy intellectual leader of the crew, acts throughout the novel as the final decider in all matters of justice. Billy Budd, in the opening chapters, is described as, “Young; and despite his all but fully developed frame, in aspect looked even younger than he really was, owing to a lingering adolescent expression in the as yet smooth face all but feminine in purity of natural complexion,” (Melville, 9). It is established early on that Billy Budd is the story’s protagonist, and hero; just as well, towards the middle of the book, we meet the story’s antagonist, Master-at-Arms John Claggart. Claggart is shown to dislike Billy Budd for no reason other than Claggart’s, “mania of [an] evil nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born with him and innate,” (Melville, 43). After these three characters are thoroughly characterized in the first half of the book, in front of a backdrop depicting the mutinous mentality currently present in British martial life, the conflict presents itself. Billy is accused, without evidence, by Claggart of inciting mutiny. To this, Billy’s simple nature is unable to respond, and he hits John Claggart, killing him dead. For the rest of the book, the circumstances surrounding the death of Claggart are explored through the lense of good and evil, and the book ends with a poem dedicated to Billy Budd.

There are many elements of this book which stand firmly in the tradition of Romanticism. The first of these is the depiction of sailor life, and the mutinous mindset pervasive in the English fleets of the time. On pages 63 to 64, John Claggart is warning Captain Vere about the possibility of Billy’s insubordination and acts of treason, and is interrupted when adding, “God forbid, your honor, that the Bellipotent’s should be the experience of the..” (Melville, 64). Captain Vere has a knee jerk, fear-filled reaction to the word ‘mutiny’ even potentially being spoken, and is a prime example of the tensions of sea life during these times. The ocean, being expansive and utterly silent, bears no witness to crimes committed on its surface, and the Nore Mutinies, a major mutiny made by British sailors in the late 18th century, had just taken place a few years before the events in this novel. Due to the historical and political circumstances, Vere immediately sees any threat of insubordination or mutiny as deadly serious; refusing, even, to allow the word ‘mutiny’ to be spoke. The thematic implications of this conversation are interesting, mainly because Vere’s perceived threat of insubordination (mutiny) is born from the insubordination of Claggart’s lies. Throughout the tail end of Billy Budd, the presence of mutiny serves as both a Romantic reminder of the sublime power and isolation of nature, as well as a cultural and historical artifact of the anxiety which was pervasive during this period in time.

The second piece of purely Romantic influence can be seen in Melville’s high appraisal of the forces of nature. Nature is explored most thoroughly as Billy Budd’s execution nears, climaxing with a piece of Romantic poetry on the final page (See Fig. 1). This chilling, final eulogy is written in perhaps the most beautiful language of the book; “I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there? / Just ease these darbies at the wrist, / And roll me over fair! / I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist,” (Melville, 114). The poem as a whole is an ode to Billy Budd’s life; praising his stoicism and grace during a morally questionable execution. The above excerpt is from the closing of the poem, and contains Melville’s final ode to nature; “the oozy weeds about me twist.” Gorgeous in its sublime presentation, this line’s poignancy can be felt for hours after; life continues after death, nature is always slowly turning and moving, and we are dying. The amount of description which is left out of this final image takes advantage of its own ambiguity in a very Romantic way; allowing the mind to fill in the space of its lacking solidity with personal experiences of death, loss, fear, and nature.

Finally, the binary of good and evil, a Romantic/Enlightenment era ideology, is also explored throughout this novel, and represents the first break from tradition in Billy Budd’s themes (Haydock (1)). Good and evil is presented, through the first half of the book, as a binary, particularly in John Claggart and Billy Budd. Billy is painted as the ‘Handsome Sailor;’ an entirely innocent, simple-minded person, who has an air of nobility and an intrinsic sense of duty, justice, and morality. The author describes Claggart, on the other hand, in a much harsher light;

“Though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational,” (Melville, 43).

The binary of good and evil is established up to this point and conforms to Enlightenment and Romantic thematics. Melville veers from this binary, however, towards a more complex, less certain view of the world; namely in the complications which arise after the death of Claggart. On page 84, Melville asks and answers several very difficult questions;

“But in natural justice, is nothing but the prisoner’s overt act to be considered? How can we adjudge to summary and shameful death a fellow creature innocent before God, and whom we feel to be so? Does that state it aright? You sign sad assent. Well, I too feel that, the full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear attest our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King.”

This passage is incredibly important simply because of its questioning of human constructs of justice and morality. Essentially, this passage is denouncing the good versus evil binary previously glorified in the novel, and by Romanticism; instead, pointing out that the justice which Nature deals out is quite different from human notions of justice, morality, and good and evil. Pairing this with Melville’s admittance of the unknown causes of human nature (mainly the source of Claggart’s anger towards Billy Budd), the reader is left with many questions about whether or not what Billy did, and what happened to him as a result, were truly just, and, more generally, what the true nature of justice is.

Finally, there are parts of this novel which depart entirely from Romantic tendencies, and act as a direct lineage to Modernism. The first of these is the intertextuality present in Billy Budd. There are countless references to biblical allusions, Greek, Roman, Pagan, Germanic, and other mythologies, and fables of all sorts. Two frequently recurring myths being those of Achilles and Hercules. Billy is referenced by both the author, and other shipmates, as reminiscent of the athletic and beautiful Achilles, as well as the strong, simple and morally impregnable Hercules. This establishes Billy as a classic hero, which is a Romantic theme; however, the directness of intertextual references is generally viewed as a firmly Modernist tendency. The second important transitional element is that Billy Budd is arranged as thirty short chapters, most chapters lasting no longer than one to three pages. In each chapter, the author enters into different character’s heads directly, using phrases such as, “he thought,” “he remembered,” etc., which is an indication of free-indirect discourse. Free indirect discourse, though used occasionally by authors before the 1900s, is generally attributed to Modernism and Postmodernism; employed as a tool to observe a collective subjective experience. Billy Budd certainly has faint, formal elements of this search for subjective experience. Because there are no “universal truths” in this book, no common thought patterns between shipmates, it suggests that Melville is rejecting the idea that the mind is a tameable, understandable machine. Instead, each character is unique in their interpretation of the world, as well as in their experience of time, events, and social constructs, symbolizing Melville’s capitulation to the unknown. And the third important transition which Billy Budd employs is a fragmented narrative, which is reminiscent of the Modernists. The story is not necessarily told in any sort of chronological order, and often intertwines tangential thoughts about contemporary martial life, observations of nature, different historical events, and events on the Bellipotent into each chapter. In addition, these chapters contain a sort of layered narration; the story is being told by an unnamed narrator, who occasionally inserts himself into the text, and, more frequently, inserts the character’s thoughts and thought processes into the text. All of these different layers of consciousness, thematics, and perspectives create a sense of anxiety, of murkiness: a lack of clarity which the reader must see through and explore fully to understand the implications of the plot. This fragmented, self-conscious, multiple perspective novel represents a serious shift from the Romantic traditions of linear, thematically enclosed stories.

Herman Melville’s novel Billy Budd is the last foot through the door between Romanticism and Modernism, and represents both a completion of Romanticism’s arc, as well as the new starting point and standard for the Modernists who followed. Authors such as William Faulkner, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and their contemporaries followed in Melville’s footsteps; employing and perfecting styles such as fragmented narration, multiple points of views, subjective/personal language, intertextual references, and invoking a renewal of Greek and Roman mythology. Billy Budd’s explorations of governmental/military bureaucracy would also prove to be far more important than he may have thought. The 1900s marked a sharp increase in both industry, commercialism, civilization and the rise in fascist/authoritarian regimes; the earliest traces of which are present in Billy Budd’s portrayal of the disorder and unknowability of life at sea. Writers ranging from modernists such as George Orwell, Franz Kafka, and Djuna Barnes, to postmodernists such as Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, and Aldous Huxley, to more contemporary writers such as Jonathan Franzen, Don Delillo, and David Foster Wallace, have all explored what it means to live in a society dictated by human constructs, which are inherently flawed due to human subjectivity. This is the gift which Melville gave to us: the ability to notice that no longer was Nature the head entity in charge of providing and overseeing crime and punishment. Herman Melville’s Billy Budd is the last glimpse at a world before humans had broken the limits of transcendentalism, and reached a point of dominion over nature; which entailed humankind’s final fall from nature, symbiosis and Romanticism, into bureaucracy, parasitism and Modernism.

Works Cited

Brooklyn College, English Department. "Romanticism." Romanticism. 12 Feb. 2009. Web. 27 Mar. 2016. <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html>.
Haydock, John. (1) "Melville's "Seraphita" (p. 2-13) " Melville's "Seraphita" Hampton University, Mar. 1996. Web. 27 Mar. 2016. <http://www.melville.org/seraphit.htm>.
Haydock, John. (2) "Melville's "Seraphita" (Biographical information)" Melville's "Seraphita" Hampton University, Mar. 1996. Web. 27 Mar. 2016. <http://www.melville.org/seraphit.htm>.
Melville, Herman. “Billy Budd,” entire book. Billy Buddy, finished 1891; published 1924.
McCrum, Robert. "The 100 Best Novels." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 13 Jan. 2014. Web. 27 Mar. 2016. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/13/100-best-novels-observer-moby-dick>.

Billy in the Darbies

Good of the chaplain to enter Lone Bay

And down on his marrowbones here and pray

For the likes just o' me, Billy Budd. -- But, look:

Through the port comes the moonshine astray!

It tips the guard's cutlass and silvers this nook;

But 'twill die in the dawning of Billy's last day.

A jewel-block they'll make of me tomorrow,

Pendant pearl from the yardarm-end

Like the eardrop I gave to Bristol Molly --

O, 'tis me, not the sentence they'll suspend.

Ay, ay, all is up; and I must up too,

Early in the morning, aloft from alow.

On an empty stomach now never it would do.

They'll give me a nibble -- bit o' biscuit ere I go.

Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;

But, turning heads away from the hoist and the belay,

Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!

No pipe to those halyards. -- But aren't it all a sham?

A blur's in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am.

A hatchet to my hawser? All adrift to go?

The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know?

But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank;

So I'll shake a friendly hand ere I sink.

But -- no! It is dead then I'll be, come to think.

I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank.

And his cheek it was like the budding pink.

But me they'll lash in hammock, drop me deep.

Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.

I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?

Just ease these darbies at the wrist,

And roll me over fair!

I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.

Fig. 1: Billy Budd, Herman Melville; Chapter 30, page 114; Billy in the Darbies

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Makings and Markings of Modernism: Faulkner, Woolf, and Barnes

The major literary periods seem to have distinct inspirations; more often than not, they are born directly from a mix of the newest, most revolutionary technological, philosophical, scientific, and exploratory discoveries. This is because the arts, and literature in particular, draws influence from the unique discoveries of the culture during particular time periods; it is a mirror made from the materials of the time, crafted by members of the culture, and captures in its glare a reflection of the very culture that created it. Contemporary artists act as conductors of the cultural orchestra of their time; directing and translating, from a master source of new information, the most vital and current happenings of the time. Although there tend to be explicit demarcations between literary periods, Modernism is one of the more difficult movements to pin down by definition; and that may be the whole point.

In the late 1800s, the popular literary style was Realism in America, and Victorian Realism in England (Rahn). This was generally how literature saw the world until around the 1890s, when there was a sudden and immense increase in technology and the sciences, known as the Second Industrial Revolution (Engelman). Important inventions and discoveries of the time ranged from machine guns, to advanced photographic technology, to the internal combustion engine, to the lowering of costs which allowed, for the first time, production of consumer products (Engelman). A common starting point for Modernism, according to the faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is 1890; this is convenient because it is near the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, at the height of the Second Industrial Revolution. This period includes the works of both Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, and Einstein, the Theory of Special Relativity, the thought experiments on entangled particles, and finally is early enough to include important early Modernists such as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Claude Monet, and Edouard Manet, to name a few. Another major influence for Modernism, and the definitive end to imperialism in Europe and the East, were the events leading up to and preceding World War I (Watts). Jerica Watts, in Writing the War to End the War, notes that, “Although it was a popular war at the beginning, as the years peeled away and the death toll mounted, bitterness and disillusionment set in.” The war raged from 1914 to 1918, during which approximately 18 million people lost their lives; a war in which the dwindling imperial powers of France and England gave one last shove forward in an attempt to force their way into a share of the Middle East; important areas such as Syria, India, Palestine, and most of the Middle East, which they wished to either maintain dominion over, or mine for their natural resources (Watts). Although World War I probably had the most dramatic effects on Modernist writing (White), events such as the Great Depression, the advancements being made in psychology, science, and technology, and the introduction of consumer goods all acted as fuel for Modernist thinking.

Modernism, therefore, is both informed by, as well as reacting to, the world as it is in that period of time. The generally accepted starting point is around 1890, with a sharp spike during World War I, and continuing until the beginning of World War II (Faculty, UNLV). 1939, according to the faculty at UNLV, is the perfect end year because, “Insofar as Modernism is characterized chiefly by experimentation in structure, form, and technique, Finnegans Wake is the ultimate work of Modernism. It is truly the pinnacle of this experimentation and novelty.” (Faculty, UNLV). The can be seen in Modernism’s resulting belief system. There are several new, distinct directions which Modernists were the first to explore; one of them being the fragmentation of reality (White). “The devastation and disillusion of Western Civilization in the Great War certainly accelerated and deepened Modernist thinking,” (White). By “Devastation and disillusion,” White means to say that the post-World War I Modernists felt a sort of detachment and even resentment towards the traditions they had once trusted, that they had built their lives upon, and which had ultimately collapsed beneath them with the aftermath of the post-World War I era. This was a reaction to both the war, and the sense that the previous literary tradition of Realism, of rationality, had failed them, and run their course. In turn, the movement became both aesthetic and political. In addition, the revelations of Sigmund Freud’s work in psychoanalysis and the nature of the unconscious mind unsettled the public: The idea that we may not have total control over our own minds, a core piece of Enlightenment era ideology, caused ripples of disenchantment across societies. Adding to this was the discovery of what Schrodinger termed ‘quantum entanglement’, and the resulting physics revolution that took place; all of the scientific work of this time was producing more evidence that we understood far less than we had previously believed. The Modernists used this sense of broken and newly subjective reality to inform their new narrative structures; which consisted largely of fragmenting reality through multiple perspectives, inconsistent interior states, internalized language (stream of consciousness), and the use of non-linear time (White). Another important change, caused by the same events as the first, in writing during the Modernist period, is the ridicule of social and political conventions. From religion, to civil rights, to the standards of ‘intelligence’; Modernism took the role of questioning the systems of human governance that had led to the disillusionment of World War I. Adding to the sense of disillusionment was the self-consciousness in literature, apparent in both the character, and the author’s presence (White). Inspired by Freud’s theory of the unconscious, Modernists were able to transform these groundbreaking ideas on the human mind, using intertextual references, appropriating old myths, primitivism (or the belief in simplicity and economy), isolation of characters, and the breaking of the fourth wall (White). The arrangement of complex symbols and references to other texts indicates to the reader that there is an author working behind the page; the Freudian idea of the inner monologue and the unconscious are sourced by the Modernists as the form, and the content generally everyday people in everyday, even anti-heroic, situations (Faculty, UNLV). The point of Modernism is summed up perhaps most succinctly by Ezra Pound, who saw Modernism as expressing the dire need, socially, culturally and philosophically, to, “Make it new!”

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying has prime examples of nearly every one of the Modernist literary devices; but perhaps the most prominent aspect of Modernism in the book is the use of multiple perspectives. Each chapter is a different character’s stream of consciousness; an up close approach which allows Faulkner to employ internalized language, subjective interpretations of reality, and distinct vernaculars, using his characters as vessels. My favorite example of this is in the character, Vardaman, who is the youngest son, of unspecified age, in the Bundren family. In one of the early chapters of the book, Vardaman is mourning over his mother, the recently deceased Addie Bundren; “Then I can breathe again, in the warm smelling. I enter the stall, trying to touch him and then I can cry then I vomit the crying. As soon as he gets through kicking I can and then I can cry, the crying can,” (Faulkner, 54). The poor syntax, the repetition of internal, subjective language, and the ambiguous passage of time are all being employed to show Vardaman’s unique perception of reality. He is only a young boy, and therefore his thoughts cannot be that complex: indeed, his language is quite simple, and his thoughts are sporadic and at many points incoherent. This is representative of the battle against objective rationality of the Enlightenment that Modernists waged, as well as opposing the traditions of Realism by having subjective representations of reality.

Darl Bundren is a great example of a character who questions social conventions. Throughout the book, Darl is constantly referred to as, “The one everybody talks about,” because he is very quiet, and is a cultural oddity in the rural south. Darl’s uniqueness is overshadowed in the end by the fact that he fought, presumably, in World War I. On page 254 of As I lay Dying, we are in the perspective of Darl, who is on a train to a sanitarium; “Darl had a little spy-glass he got in France at the war. In it it had a woman and a pig with two backs and no face. I know what that is. ‘Is that why you are laughing, Darl?’ ‘Yes yes yes yes yes yes.’” Throughout the book, we have seen the pressures mount atop Darl; the stress of his family members, his mother dying, having only recently returned from the war, we see Darl’s language turn more and more detached as the novel progresses. This is an important piece of historical and cultural information, because it is documenting Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, in a post-war era where thousands of men suffered from which would not be diagnosed or understood scientifically until the late 1900s. The fractured language and mention of war also remind the reader of the literary purposes of Darl’s descent into PTSD: By using form and language based in detachment and disenchantment, Faulkner was able to capture those permeating post-war emotions, allowing the world culture to inform his narrative structure.

The final important characteristic of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, though, may be his use of expressive, sometimes non-sensical, language; as a way to communicate deeper meaning. This is summed up most pointedly in a famous passage from the book on page 84, a chapter which consists of Vardaman thinking one simple phrase; “My mother is a fish.” Again, this is using the repetitive internal language to accrue meaning in words which, out of context, mean nothing; in the beginning of the book, Vardaman had caught, killed and gutted a fish, and shortly thereafter his mother died. More importantly, however, is that even though Vardaman transposes his mother with the dead body of a fish, it isn’t ever made explicitly clear how this happens, or what the underlying causes are. Is Vardaman in a state of insanity? Is he just grieving? Does he actually believe this? This adds weight to the non-sensical nature of the statement, and suggests that Faulkner is able to create meaning and emotion through language alone; which is one of the major goals of Modernism. By toying more and more with form and focusing less and less on content, the Modernists hoped to evoke emotion and find “truth” using only the language itself. On top of all this, rests the most important Modernist belief; the belief that epistemological questions cannot be answered concretely (White). Therefore, Modernism is not afraid to leave questions unanswered; which is a sharp change in the literary traditions of Realism and the Enlightenment.

Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway is another important novel in the Modernist canon; and the first reason is the re-introduction of free indirect discourse to literature. Although free indirect discourse had been a concept for around one hundred years at this point, it had hardly been employed writers before the Modernist period. A good example of what free indirect discourse is comes at the dinner party that Clarissa is throwing;

“He [Richard Dalloway] was delighted to see him - ever so pleased to see him! He hadn’t changed a bit. And off they went together walking right across the room, giving each other little pats, as if they hadn’t met for a long time, Ellie Henderson thought, watching them go..” (Woolf, 170)

This passage begins in the perspective of Richard Dalloway saying that he is excited to see an old friend at the party. In the third sentence, Woolf begins to step back from her characters; switching to a ‘they’ pronoun. This is a clever technique because the ‘they’ pronouns can act as an indicator of either indirect, direct, or indirect discourse; as well as not specifying the thinker. “Giving each other little pats,” is also an image that could be either experienced directly, or observed indirectly by a third party. The final portion of the passage uses the ‘they’ pronoun to switch into the perspective of Ellie Henderson observing from afar. “Ellie Henderson thought,” completes the switch in characters because it tells the reader that Ellie is now the narrator. This popular Modernist tool was used as a reaction to the idea of objective, singular experience; the Modernists were seeking a way to reunite the broken post-war world by means of allowing reality to be a shared, fragmented experience. They included the perspectives of the “disgraced” of society, vignettes of moods and thoughts that had been suppressed for thousands of years, and attempted to unite the fallen citizens of the ex-imperial powers, through the normal, everyday, banal parts of life.

Another interesting approach to post-war literary concerns, was Woolf’s intertextuality with scientific, psychological, and philosophical works. Virginia Woolf was friends with Sigmund Freud in the beginnings of the 1900s, and his writings on egotism, the unconscious, and the inner monologue had clear effects on her narrative structure. For example, on page 132 in Mrs. Dalloway;

“‘I never go to parties,’ said Miss Kilman, just to keep Elizabeth from going. ‘People don’t ask me to parties” -and she knew as she said it that it was this egotism that was her undoing; Mr. Whittaker had warned her; but she could not help it. She had suffered so horribly.”

The reference to Freudian theories on the ego are clear here; “just to keep Elizabeth from going,” suggests that Miss Kilman understands that she is actively using passivity in order to guilt Elizabeth into not leaving her. In addition, “People don’t ask me to parties,” is sympathy seeking behavior; which Freud would classify as the Id, or our base instincts, overtaking our Ego and Superego, or our better judgement. The closing sentences are perhaps the most important part of the passage, in that they illustrate the cognitive dissonance and irrationality of the human mind. Miss Kilman contradicts her prior statements when she says, “She knew as she said it that it was this egotism that was her undoing,” saying that although she understands that this type of childish behavior will only drive Elizabeth away, and that “Mr. Whittaker had warned her,” she still, “Could not help it. She had suffered so horribly.” This is a great rendition of human consciousness by the standards of Freudian psychology; in that it is contradictory, instinctive as opposed to logical, and paradoxical. This acts not only as a reference to Freudian psychology, but also, on the literary level, Mrs. Dalloway is rebelling against the rationality of both the Enlightenment, Imperialism/Aristocracy, and Realism.

Finally, I think that it is important to note that in Mrs. Dalloway, just as in As I Lay Dying, the same everyday effects of World War I are explored thoroughly. Virginia Woolf uses the character of Septimus who is a veteran of the war, and throughout the book sees two different doctors to try and cure his hallucinations, mood swings and paranoia. In Septimus’ penultimate passage, he is desperate to avoid the help of a therapist who he believes Septimus’ problem is simply that he has developed a pattern of viewing the world out of “proportion”. Septimus scrambles to find a way out of having to talk again with the doctor, and on page 149, he realizes that of all his options,

“There remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window, the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing himself out. It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Reiza’s (for she was with him). Holmes and Bradshaw like that sort of thing (He sat on the sill.) But he would wait til the very last moment. He did not want to die. Life was good. The sun hot. Only human beings-what did they want? Coming down the staircase opposite an old man stopped and stared at him. Holmes was at the door. “I’ll give it you!” He cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down onto Mrs. Filmer’s area railings.” (Woolf, 149)

There are several important aspects of this passage; the first is that Septimus does not want to die, even though he commits suicide. This is a comment on what was then termed “shell shock.” Woolf is saying that even though terrible things have happened to survivors of war (and other traumatic experiences), even though they may be in mental anguish from what happened, may even feel the need to shut their own weighted conscious down permanently, that does not mean how they act is who they are inside. “But he would wait til the very last moment. He did not want to die. Life was good,” is Septimus explicitly saying that there are still salvageable parts of Septimus’ conscious; that underneath the great pressure of PTSD, there is still a thinking, breathing human beneath. This is an incredibly important revolution in the general opinion on mental illnesses; pre-1900s, even into the early 1900s, the treatment of mentally unstable patients was cruel, unusual, and seemingly backed only by “rational” thought. The inability for doctors to fully understand their patient’s minds was not even a question before Freudian psychology; it was precisely Freud’s views on the existence of an unconscious mind that sparked a more patient-centric medical world. Woolf is arguing against medical and psychological standards, against cultural norms, and against all prior literary traditions; trying to show that the mind is not some easily understandable anatomical structure; that there are things going on in our brains that we have not even begun to fathom, and that mental patients should be treated with more empathy, and less doctorly callousness.

Mrs. Dalloway and As I Lay Dying are examples of Modernist literature at the very peak of its experimentation; during the 1920s and early 30s. The arrival of Modernism at Postmodernism is marked by the year 1939, according to faculty at UNLV, with the publication of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake; however, the descent began earlier than that with Djuna Barnes’ novel Nightwood. Published in 1937, and straddling the line between High Modernism and Postmodernism, Nightwood is a novel based solely on interpretations of reality through metaphorical language, and symbolic organization. To begin, the book is still grounded in Modernist literary traditions, especially in its application of fragmented reality. In what, for me, was the densest chapter of the book, Watchman, What of the Night? explores the deepest machinations of human unconsciousness. In this chapter, although the form is still inspired by Freudian theories, it is at a very advanced stage; that of the dark unconscious. Dr. Matthew O’Connor and Nora Flood debate about the “night,” which is an amalgamation of all the things we do not know (i.e the unconscious mind, going against Enlightenment rationality). “You thought you knew well, and you hadn’t even shuffled the cards--now the nights of one period are not the nights of another. Neither are the nights of one city the nights of another,” (Barnes, 88). The first sentence of the passage recalls Einstein’s theory of spacetime and relativity, as well as Freudian theories on the unconscious. In addition, the second part of the first sentence says, “Now the nights of one period are not the nights of another,” suggests that humans’ nature and outlook is always evolving, expanding, and shifting, on large scales: that separate periods in time are just that; they should have no influence over the traditions of the time. This is a clear Modernist struggle against ideas of the Enlightenment, but, further, it is beginning to inch into the realm of Postmodernism’s ironic and jaded outlook towards tradition and power structures.

The second transitional element of Nightwood is its stance towards social conventions. In the two aforementioned Modernist works, we have seen a refutation of social conventions; but not the refutation of “truth”. The Modernists believed that although scientifically rationalizing the world was not possible, they did believe in the power of language; they believed that by playing with form and language, they would be able to capture elusive emotions that cannot be found by means of logic. Nightwood takes this concept a step further, suggesting a shadow of doubt over the “truth”. This is highlighted in a passage with Dr. O’Connor, where he explains, “There is no “truth”, and you have set it between you; you have been unwise enough to make a formula; you have dressed the unknowable in the garments of the known,” (Barnes, 145). This is explicit denial of the existence of any sort of “truth” in a human system, and the implications of the statement are very serious. If “truth” sought through “a formula” is useless, and language is just a manmade structure (or, formula) used to communicate and find “truth”; could the Modernist’s conviction that language is able to find subjective “truth” be rendered hopeless? “Garments of the known,” certainly alludes to the organization and subjective “truth” searched for in employed in Modernist literature. However, this passage is not only the questioning of certain social conventions, as is normal for Modernism; it is a strong warning against the seeking of any “truth” whatsoever; the condemnation of any form of human organization, due to inherent human irrationality, and the lack of any universal “truths”.

This lack of universal “truth” leads fittingly towards the questioning of title, tradition and the role of the past. These themes are explored most explicitly through the character of Baron Felix Volkbein. The beginning of Nightwood opens up with descriptions of Felix’s parents, and their own histories; his mother and father were both dead by the time he was born. This section talks about the Volkbein’s roots in Judaism, Aristocracy (the Baron), and traditional social values. Next, the book moves on to describe Felix’s life, particularly in his thirties; he has a lust for seeking and rekindling his origins, which were lost with the death of his parents. Felix moves on to impregnate a woman he meets, and quickly marries, Robin, who bears him a son, and immediately after abandons Felix and the child. The rest of the book explores the effects of Felix’s actions with Robin, by following both Robin and Felix through the next several years of their lives. The structure of the novel is still important, which is an element of Modernism; by beginning before Felix was born, the reader is able to see how his past informs his present. Additionally, by showing Felix’s attempts to revive the past, the reader then becomes privy to the ways in which the “present,” for Felix, is everyone else’s “past”, and how history affects the people inside and outside of his life. Finally, Felix’s character can be regarded as having both Modernist and Postmodernist tendencies because of his love of titles and convention; “From the crux of a thousand impossible situations, Felix had become the accumulated and single -- the embarrassed. His embarrassment took the form of an obsession for what he termed, “Old Europe”: aristocracy, nobility, royalty,” (Barnes, 11). The importance of this passage permeates throughout the rest of the novel; “the crux of a thousand impossible situations,” refers not only to the accumulation of Felix’s own past, but also the accumulated history of all mankind. “The accumulated and single,” is Modernist because of the disillusionment and detachment in this passage; the repeated changes and comingling of cultures, religions, and ideologies have overlapped to push humans into states of total isolation. Ground breaking discoveries at a given time period (For the Modernists; entangled particles, psychoanalysis, the unconscious, manufacturing, etc.) are the main sources which inform the present state that culture; however, for Felix, the present grows directly out of the past. It is ironic that Felix uses the past to try and communicate and connect with the present; by framing his personality with ideas of the past, he is only moving further away from the present. This a very Postmodern idea: the rejection of not only univocal “truths”, or subjective “truths” found through language; but the rejection of all previous methods of human communication. This may explain the, “Embarrassed,” state in which Felix finds himself; embarrassed that he must live in the past to survive the present. One of the main themes that Postmodernism concerns itself with is the role of communication and information in a subjective reality: Barnes is beginning to ask the questions that Postmodernists ask, such as can we ever hope to truly communicate? Is modelling the present from prior knowledge blocking us from moving forward? And finally, what role does the past play in the present state of affairs; and is the role of language really a viable path to finding “truth” or meaningfully communicating?

Modernism is an interesting literary movement, in that its influences and styles are wide ranging, while still always remaining culturally relevant to the time period. William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and Djuna Barnes represent three distinct niches of Modernism; each employing their own unique takes on new narrative structures, while still being a part of the larger Modernist community. This is representative of the post-war era; the destabilization of society after imperial collapse, causing fragmentation of conventional social structures, and the breakdown of titles and tradition. Modernism’s beginnings are marked by the aforementioned literary devices; employed to capture the inner workings of a human’s mind; stream of consciousness and subjective experience. The middle of Modernism, where Woolf and Faulkner contributed greatly, is a shift in focus from the individual subjective experience, to the collective subjective experience; novels like As I Lay Dying and Mrs. Dalloway are just a few of the many different applications of multiple perspectives, nonlinear time to represent minds outside our own, and the further questioning of social conventions in Middle Modernism. Low and Middle Modernists were focused on the brain during the day, and, quoting James Joyce, “The action of Ulysses (early Modernism) was chiefly during the daytime, and the action of my new work (high Modernism/Postmodernism) takes place chiefly at night. It's natural things should not be so clear at night, isn't it now?” In my opinion, Nightwood is just as relevant, if not more so, than Finnegan’s Wake; in that it is not only questioning, but openly rebelling against, several different, highly controversial social conventions, while also exploring, and structuring the narrative after, the dark side of the unconscious; as in the Wake. This is important because although Barnes may have intended Nightwood simply to ask the question of whether or not the Modernists had pushed far enough into the unconscious and the unknown, accidentally or otherwise, she ended up aiding in trapping literature in the unknowability of Postmodernism.

The path of Modernism can be summed up thusly: by questioning prior social, political, scientific, and artistic traditions, the Modernists were able to advance world literature at an incredible pace. However, when nearly all social conventions of the early 20th century had finally been critiqued, and fell away with history, language, which had acted as the fuel for the Modernists search for subjective truth, was all that remained. By eliminating every other means by which to find subjective truth, language became the only fuel left which to propel literature forward. Just as Baron had been doomed by his own history from the start in Nightwood; from the beginning, Modernism was set to devolve into irony, cynicism, and metafiction, the search for truth having been abandoned. At the end of Modernism, all that remained were words; when at last the final narrative structure had been rejected and rearranged, as the last social and cultural values were scrutinized and dismantled, writers were forced to turn on the last tools of their trade; to question the only remaining literary certitude left standing after High Modernism; the language itself.

Works Cited

Faculty. "Modernism." Modernism. UNLV.edu, n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. <https://faculty.unlv.edu/kirschen/handouts/modernism.html>.
White, Craig. "Terms & Themes." Modernist Terms & Themes. UHCL.edu, n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/M/modernism.htm>.
Rahn, Josh. "Realism." Literature Periods & Movements. Jalic Inc., 2001. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. <http://www.online-literature.com/periods/realism.php>.
Engelman, Ryan. "The Second Industrial Revolution, 1870-1914." US History Scene. 10 Apr. 2015. Web. 9 Mar. 2016. <http://ushistoryscene.com/article/second-industrial-revolution/>.
Watts, Jarica. "Writing the War to End the War: Literary Modernism and WWI." Writing to End the War. BYU.edu, 12 Feb. 2015. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. <http://humanities.byu.edu/writing-the-war-to-end-the-war-literary-modernism-and-wwi/>.
Faulkner, William. As I lay Dying. Vintage International, copyright 1930, 1957, 1980.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Annular Hyperfloration Cycles as the Manifestation of Addiction in Infinite Jest

Cycles, by definition, are at once unbounded, in size and duration, and bounded, contained inside their own recursivity. David Foster Wallace posits in his much of his work, and most poignantly in his tome, Infinite Jest, that these types of cycles are an especially common affliction in america: in our consumption of TV, drugs, food, and pleasurable activities in general, like characters in the book, we find ourselves stuck between the needs and desires of experiencing more pleasure, and the guilt and physical toll of wanting to quit our bad habits but not being able to. He also, through example, shows that there is neither one fixed type of cycle or addiction, rather there are a range of variables both leading up to and encouraging cyclical behavior in consumer America. The three main plot lines in Infinite Jest include a rigidly structured tennis academy, a struggle over fatal entertainment between Canada and the United States, and a drug and alcohol recovery house. At the heart of the physical landscape between Canada and the United States is a massive hole called, “The Great Concavity”. The Great Concavity is the site where annular fusion, the act of creating 100% efficient energy, takes place: “...You could achieve a high-waste annulating fusion by bombarding highly toxic radioactive particles with massive doses of stuff even more toxic than the radioactive particles. A fusion that feeds on poisons and produces relatively stable plutonium fluoride and uranium tetrafluoride,” (572). The whole idea of annular fusion is to create sustainable energy from this process, but the downside is that massive amounts of trash need to be thrown into it periodically to sustain and control the reaction, otherwise collapse would ensue. In addition, David Dunning, in his essay The Elusiveness of Reality in Infinite Jest, states that, “ Wallace is interested not only in chemical dependence, but also in the psychological dependencies that can attach to any enjoyment” (Dunning, 7). The Great Concavity plays a major role in every facet of the book, from Canadian separatism to the everyday lives of citizens to the corporations who are most successful: I plan to argue that the Great Concavity, and Annular Hyperfloration Cycles in particular, is David Foster Wallace’s attempt to render the shape of the “Psychological dependencies” which haunt the characters in his hyper-American novel, Infinite Jest.

To begin, the Great Concavity is a waste site located in the northeastern United States. The section about Mario’s film on the Organization of North American Nations is where we learn much of the central information about the Great Concavity (380-407). The President of Mexico, the Prime Minister of Canada, President Johnny Gentle, and Rodney Tine are all present at the two meetings that Mario shows, the first of which is being held in order to secure the merger of the three countries, into one unified nation, and the second of which is being held so the U.S can pawn off the Great Concavity (380-86, and 400-405). On the origin of the Great Concavity, Rodney Tine of the U.S.O.U.S only has this to say:

“No one’s prepared to say they’re quite sure what’s happened, or which quote unquote loyal part of the Union or Organization might reasonably be said to be culpable, but it’s not the administration’s immediate concern to point the levelling finger of blame or aspersion just yet or right now” (401).

The Great Concavity includes the northernmost parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, and Maine, and the clearest explanation of what happened to bring the Great Concavity to fruition are on pages 398-399:

“Vast collections of drums leaking industrial solvents, chlorides, benzenes and oxins had been quote “stumbled on”...the corroded receptacles had been placed there against statute by large men with white body suits and short haircuts in long shiny trailer trucks with O.N.A.N.’s official crest.”

It is also implied, in addition to the U.S government having played a role, that through the amount of waste receptacles found and the general tension of the U.S Configuration Cabinet, increases in consumerism and commercial culture have also played a major role in the increased amounts of garbage and pollution, most of which has gathered in the northeastern United States.

Throughout the book, there are countless appearances of the word “dumpster,” as well as the ideas of cleanliness and filth. The portrait alone of the northeastern Unites States and southern Canada is filthy: a large hole of pure toxicity fueled and controlled by adding more toxicity, which neither the United States nor Canada wishes to claim. In turn, because of the need for constant waste, there are dumpsters everywhere: “In every alley are green I.W.D. dumpsters and the smaller red I.W.D dumpsters to take the overflow from the green dumpsters,” (221). The dumpsters are catapulted into the Great Concavity from Boston, and throughout the book characters are written with the sounds of the giant catapults sounding in the background: Hal when he is clipping his toenails on the phone with Orin, Erdedy in his room, Joelle in the bathroom when she is overdosing, to name a few. The characters in the book live in a world where creating trash is not only common, but the habit of throwing things away is so ingrained in society that the most successful companies are ones who create waste removal products: even the catapult facilities, which fling the waste into the Great Concavity from Boston, are “O.N.A.N.-subsidized,” (241).

The backdrop of an utterly disparate and befouled dystopian America pushes the characters in Infinite Jest towards extremes of pleasure seeking and stress relief. One interesting way this manifests is in the division between cleanliness and filth in the novel. Some examples of cleanliness in the book would include Joelle, who, “Used to like to get really high and then clean,” (736), Avril’s “Compulsive cleaning thing,” (F.N 82, 1000), Johnny Gentle, Famous Crooner’s “Dermalatix Hypospectral personal sterilization booth,” (383), Hal showering and brushing his teeth after smoking marijuana, etc. To name a few converse examples, Poor Tony Krause’s entire character, Gately and Fackelmann during their binge, and the addicts waiting at the methadone clinic (194). All of these characters have addictions or obsessive compulsions of one sort or another which, whether the ramifications of these compulsions are filthy or clean in nature, stem from the character’s internal struggles: their own Great Concavity. I.e, an addiction, is an addiction, is an addiction. Wallace mentions this thoroughly in his essay E. Unibus Pluram, in which he states:

“An activity is addictive if one’s relationship to it lies on that downward-sloping continuum between liking it a little too much and down-right needing it. Many addictions, from exercise to letter-writing, are pretty benign. But something is malignantly addictive if, 1) it causes real problems for the addict, and 2) it offers itself as relief from the very problems it causes,” (Wallace, E Unibus Pluram, 13).

Both the characters who clean compulsively and the characters who are infantile in their inability to advocate for themselves, under this definition, would all be categorized as malignantly addicted: caught in a cycle similar to that of annular fusion, wherein it is perceived that the problem can be solved by adding more of the element that created the problem in the first place. The most immediate and poignant example in the book comes on page 383: “The Johnny Gentle whose C.U.S.P. had been totally up-front about seeing America renewal as an essentially aesthetic affair.” The C.U.S.P (Clean United States Party) is the incredibly popular political party created by President Johnny Gentle, who has incited a spurt of O.C.D-esque cleanliness across the United States: the only problem is that, as the quote suggests, the cleanliness is limited to the visible. Despite the waste-free streets and the countless neat freaks in the novel, there remains not only people living in actual filth, but a collective movement of malignant addiction (filth) embedded in even the cleanest seeming bones of Wallace’s dystopian America.

There are plenty of other groups of american citizens David Foster Wallace shows throughout the book who have similar extreme qualities of malignant addiction. The first main branch of the story, Ennet House, is centered around addicts. The difference between the addicts at Ennet House and addicts in other parts of the story, is that in order to recover, the addicts must, “utterly total surrender,” (138). At first glance, Ennet House appears to be the antithesis of addiction: addicts are forced to break their cycles of addiction, by giving themselves up, forced to admit that, “No matter how smart [they] thought [they] were, [they] were actually way less smart than that,” (201), and to essentially admit their lack of control. This is a great way to recover, however, for most addicts in Ennet House, it does not work out this way.

Randy Lenz is a fine example of a character who is not following Ennet House procedures. On pages 538 and 539, Randy Lenz finds, “His own dark way to deal with the well-known Rage and Powerlessness issues that beset the drug addict in his first few months of abstinence,” which includes ingesting, “Organic cocaine,” (543) and savagely de-mapping cats and dogs. Lenz’s take on the situation is, “Cocaine-ingestion this occasional and last-resort is such a marked reduction of the Use & Abuse for Lenz that it’s a bonerfied miracle and clearly constitutes as much miraculous sobriety as total abstinence would be for another person...: he knows he’s sober,” (543). Lenz is staying at Ennet House, not because he wishes to get sober, but because he is hiding from both police and an angry drug dealer (543). Lenz, by Wallace’s definition, is malignantly addicted, as his problems are caused by his use of cocaine, and he perceives the solution to his problems as a lack of cocaine ingestion. Opposite Lenz’s disregard for thought, are those characters at Ennet House who think too much. Geoffrey Day is a great example, a professor at a junior college who has been in Ennet House for six days (272). In this section, it is November 6th, and Day is saying how much the program has changed him, how accepting and healed he is now, how gratuitous he is for having “found sobriety” (271-72). But, on endnote 90, page 1000, just five days later on November 11th, Day is talking to Gately and using esoteric references to try and find a hole in AA: “Wasn’t this the very horror the Madisonians were horrified of in 1791?” Day, though at first he was feigning having transformed, is an over thinker, one who is trapped in his addiction by his own head’s refusal to admit having done any wrong by trying to find an external cause. Then finally, there are even those members who have taken the advice of recovery, and who show that too much emphasis in any one area of life, good or bad, is still a cyclical, malignant addiction. For instance, the fact that there are AA members who are addicted to total abstinence from escapism. “Certain incredibly advanced and hard-line recovering persons who have pared away potential escape after potential escape until finally...too advanced to stomach the thought of the potential emotional escape of doing anything whatsoever...just end up sitting there motion- and escapeless,” (F.N 70, 998). In this instance, AA becomes the “drug”, and the addict is trying to solve the paradox of staying sober by abstaining from emotional escape, while simultaneously defining all external stimuli as potential emotional escape. This extreme case of AA is malignantly addictive, in that it purports to solve the problem it creates: more AA to solve a stasis set on by AA. All three of these addicts share the cyclical cage of illusions of grandeur followed by low points (real problems), as well as the ability to “solve” the problems caused by the cyclicality (addiction) by continuing down the same path (the substance): this is important because by including various justifications for the same problem, David Foster Wallace proves that extremes of any nature are bad, as well as proving that addicts, and humans in general, are all common in the way they will give arms and legs to justify continuing to do things which harm them.

Up the hill from Ennet House is a rigidly structured tennis academy, where students are not only pressed incredibly hard in their classes but who are also subjected to strange, difficult and sometimes humiliating forms of physical conditioning. During the days, the students are worked thoroughly, both mentally and physically, and by the end of the longest, hardest ones, some of the students feel quite low. However, in the locker room, the players are allowed to decompress by talking for a short thirty minutes, and Hal claims this is intentional, “The what looks like sadism, the skeletal stress, the fatigue. The suffering unites us. They want to let us sit around and bitch. Together. After a bad P.M set we all, however briefly, get to feel we have a common enemy. This is their gift to us. Their medicine. Nothing brings you together like a common enemy” (113). The key component of this fragment is the clue, “Their medicine:” Hal is equating the physical toll of being at the Academy with the “real world”, or AA’s Out There, and the thirty minutes that the staff allows the boys at the end of the day is their relief, their emotional escape. In the case of the tennis academy, it is difficult to say whether or not the kids inflict the “addiction” on themselves, because in most cases there seems to be much parental pressure: John Wayne having to win to save his dad by making enough money as a tennis player (262), Hal’s family’s involvement and pressures to get him to play tennis, and the fact that all of the students are looking to get into The Show, to reach fame. This is exactly what Wallace warns about in a lot of his interviews, and something that he experienced himself and expressed in his Kenyon Commencement Speech: by putting fame/intelligence/material goods on a pedestal, if you do not achieve those things, you feel as though you have lost something you never had, and then even if you do attain those things you will still feel empty inside (Wallace, Kenyon Speech, 8). The final interesting piece comes, potentially, from the name ETA itself: ‘estimated time of arrival’ connotes a certain impatience, a certain longing and petulence for the good thing you’ve always wanted to happen, to finally happen to you. All of the kids at ETA are physically and mentally pushing themselves further than their limits, and not because that’s what they wish to do in that moment, but because they are thinking of the future: this is emotional escape at its finest. So, the longing to be famous or to be successful creates serious, physical and mental issues for the players, which they justify to themselves by repeating that it will be all worth it when they get to the show. Now, to answer the question of whether or not this cycle of addictive behavior is malignant: the students at ETA are either pushed by their parents and/or society’s expectations to go to school at ETA, there, they are physically and emotionally tormented day in and day out, and their relief is having a common enemy in the staff of ETA. They use their bit of “Medicine” everyday ridiculing the staff that punishes them as emotional escape from the staff that punishes them: this is indeed a malignant cycle of addiction.

Another type of relief for not only players at ETA, but the general citizenry, is entertainment and consumer culture. At first, the advent of the videophone in Infinite Jest is met with excited consumers, most of whom, at first, are very pleased with their switch from traditional telephones to the videophones. That is, until some problems arise (144-45). The consumers’ first complaint is emotional distress from losing the sense of receiving attention without having to give it that telephones used to offer: “This bilateral illusion of unilateral attention [which telephones used to allow] was almost infantilely gratifying from an emotional standpoint: you got to believe you were receiving somebody’s complete attention without having to return it.” (146). In addition to the emotional stress that came with videophones, was the effect of physical vanity, which caused users to be incredibly self-conscious about their appearances, which, with telephones, used to not matter at all (147). This is important because in the book, when producers want to sell something, they make products that are best suited to what they think people want to see/buy: the product is a mirror reflecting consumer’s desires. This is shown in companies’ responses to their perceptions of consumer demands wherein manufacturers then create “masks,” which gave the user both a, “slightly over intense expression of complete attention,” as well as enhancing their overall appearance (148), in an effort to combat the anxiety/vanity caused by the original product. These masks did the trick, apparently, as, “Consumers soon found that the high up-front cost of a permanent wearable mask was more than worth it, considering the stress- and VFD-reduction benefits,” (147). The, “Natural distortion in the way persons tend to see themselves,” (148) simultaneously informs corporations in the book about what products they should make, as well as any additional apps/upgrades they can sell. The act of buying “masks” turns into, “[consumers] preferring and then outright demanding videophone masks that were really quite a lot better-looking than they themselves were in person,” (148). This causes even further problems of emotional and physical vanity for consumers, so companies begin making dummy images of the users in order to solve the problem: “Such horrendously skewed and enhanced masked images of themselves, that enormous psychosocial stress began to result, large numbers of phone-users suddenly reluctant to leave home...” (149). This seems to be DFW referencing philosophies he explored in E Unibus Pluram, where the images consumers are loaded with from television and the like, videophony in this case, become the standard for real life interactions, a standard that no one can possibly hope to meet. This, in turn causes isolation, which in turn causes a “hole,” or concavity, in the consumer’s soul, which they are then allowed to fill with cheap, emotionally unstimulating, pseudo interactions from things like videophones, entertainment cartridges, food, drugs, and beyond.

Seemingly independent addictions in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest not only are born of the same cause, but also yields the same effects: from entertainment, to food, to drugs, to cleaning, to sports, to hedonism, too much of any one thing causes extreme anhedonia. The key link that paints addiction as annulation, is the interaction between Arslanian and Pemulis, where Pemulis explains annular fusion.

“The resultant fusion turns out so greedily efficient that it sucks every last toxin and poison out of the surrounding ecosystem...You end up with a surrounding environment so fertilely lush it’s practically unlivable...And you find the need to keep steadily dumping in toxins to keep the uninhibited ecosystem from spreading and overrunning more ecologically stable areas, exhausting the atmosphere’s poisons so that everything hyperventilates...The cyclic effects of the waste-delivery and fusion..Major catapulting..Which eradicates the overgrowth until the toxins are fused and utilized. The satellite scenario is that the eastern part of Grid 3 goes from overgrown to wasteland to overgrown several times a month.” (573)

So, the Great Concavity is a large area where toxins and pollution have collected over years, and have formed into a wasteland of pure toxicity. Then, in order to control the amassed toxicity, more toxins must be blasted at the current toxins: the solution to the problem of toxins, is more toxins. David Foster Wallace’s Great Concavity is a malignantly addictive cycle, and plays a role in the background of every character’s life: from their cleaning habits, to their general demeanor, to their feelings towards other people, the Concavity changes people’s perceptions about one another. Solipsism can be paralleled to the fact that the Great Concavity destroys all life when it is toxic, and over-stimulates all life when it is overgrown: this can be related to the dichotomy of the clean and the dirty, the addicted and the compulsive, sports players and entertainment addicts, every character in the book is shown at one stage or another of this annular hyperfloration cycle. The greatest connection is that by substituting human interaction with material objects (drugs, tv, cleaning, etc.), the seeds for a toxic wasteland (solipsism) are formed, and a hyperfloration cycle of extremely lush forests (on the drug/emotionally escaping) followed by extremely toxic wasteland (post-pleasure, guilt, physical/mental degradation) follows, which can be solved easiest by simply catapulting in more waste (more drugs, more tv, more pleasure). The characters in the book are americans who wish to escape, but who escape to a Concavity which, by definition, is hollow, empty, fake, and then blame their addictions on the “Concavity” itself, instead of their own will, which allows them to continue their habits: in turn, the Concavity inside them grows larger and more volatile, and the only perceived solution is to create more and more trash (do more and more pleasurable activities). So, the size and duration of the Concavity (addiction) is undefined, unbounded, while also being caged in by its own recursivity and cyclicality (solipsism). The point that arises, is discussed heavily throughout the book, from the Marathe and Steeply sections, to Gately in AA, to Hal at the end of the book: we have the choice of what we decide to give ourselves away to. When we give ourselves away to something hollow, we feel hollow inside: but, when someone, such as Don Gately, gives themselves away to something larger, to other people, to the world, without looking for anything in return, they no longer feel hollow inside, because instead of giving themselves away to“the Concavity”, something hollow and fake, they are giving themselves away to real, tangible, meaningful things. The largest question that arises, is how can we stay out of the Concavity that results from materialism: how do we get out of our own heads? Giving the last word to the author of Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace points out in his commencement speech that the greatest tool of a well-rounded individual is that, “You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.. [To possess] The kind of freedom that involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways, every day.” (Wallace, Kenyon Speech, 8)

Works Cited

Wallace, David Foster. "E Unibus Pluram." (n.d.): n. pag. JSomers.net. Proquest Information and Learning Company. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf>.
Dunning, David. Virtually Unlimited: The Elusiveness of Reality in Infinite Jest.UPenn.edu. University of Pennsylvania, 1 Apr. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=uhf_2011>
Wallace, David Foster. "2002 Kenyon Commencement Speech."Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005 Written and Delivered by David Foster Wallace (2005): n. pag.Purdue.edu. Purdue University, 25 May 2005. Web. 12 Dec. 2015. <http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf>.

Non-Fiction