Infinite Jest - Key Characters

Incandenza Family

• [Hal Incandenza] [Combines tennis genius, linguistic brilliance, emptiness, and substance use] Hal is a prodigy tennis player and linguistic genius at Enfield Tennis Academy.
• [James O. Incandenza] [is the dead father, filmmaker, optics expert, ETA founder, and creator of the lethal Entertainment] James O. Incandenza is also called JOI or Himself.
• [Avril Incandenza] [is Hal's intense mother and ETA administrator] Avril is marked by rigid propriety, emotional strangeness, and possibly inappropriate relationships.
• [Mario Incandenza] [is physically disabled but emotionally perceptive] Mario is a gentle amateur filmmaker and one of the least broken Incandenzas.
• [Orin Incandenza] [is a former ETA tennis star who becomes an NFL punter and flees into sex and paranoia] Orin is Hal's oldest brother.

Enfield Tennis Academy

• [Michael Pemulis] [is Hal's brilliant and streetwise friend] Pemulis combines math talent, recreational chemistry, and side dealing.
• [John Wayne] [is a Canadian tennis prodigy whose emotional distance makes him mysterious] John Wayne may also be involved with Avril.
• [Lyle] [is ETA's sweat-drinking spiritual advisor] Lyle resides in the weight room.
• [Schtitt] [treats tennis as a confrontation with the self rather than the opponent]

Ennet House Recovery Center

• [Don Gately] [is a recovering addict and former burglar who becomes one of the novel's moral centers] Gately works at Ennet House.
• [Pat Montesian] [directs Ennet House with serious commitment to recovery]
• [Kate Gompert] [speaks honestly about depression and suicidal ideation] Kate is also a marijuana addict.
• [Tiny Ewell] [is a sarcastic and observant Ennet House resident]
• [Randy Lenz] [is an Ennet House resident whose psychosis turns violent]
• [Joelle Van Dyne] [connects addiction, beauty, filmmaking, MIT, radio, and the Incandenza family] Joelle is also Madame Psychosis and possibly the star of the Entertainment.

Political Groups and Others

• [Remy Marathe] [is an A.F.R. member divided between separatist duty and personal loyalty]
• [M. Fortier] [leads the A.F.R. search for the master copy of the Entertainment]
• [Hugh Steeply] [is a U.S. intelligence operative undercover as Helen Steeply] Steeply tracks the lethal film's distribution.

Incandenza Family

Hal Incandenza

Knowledge and Emptiness

• [MYTAKE] [Hal turns knowledge acquisition into a form of hedonism] I existentially connect with DFW through Hal because Hal's urge to accumulate total knowledge is seductive to me, but the book's revelation is that becoming Hal is not worth it.
• [Hal displays encyclopedic knowledge in the first chapter] His dictionary-like knowledge makes him seem autistic, hyper-rational, or unable to read what other people emotionally want from him. For me it was impactful, because in my first interaction with the book I saw something with similar levels of interest in knowledge.
• • [MYTAKE] [Doctor Jekyll (knowledge) vs Mr. Hyde (autism)] among human beings, this structure is ubiquitous.
• [Quote] [Hal performs the symptoms of grief rather than experiencing them] “A coisa toda foi de pesadelo. Eu simplesmente não conseguia sacar o que o cara queria. Eu fui lá e devorei a seção de luto da biblioteca da Copley Square. Não em disco. Livros mesmo. Eu li a Kübler-Ross, o Hinton. Gramei com o Kastenbaum e Kastenbaum. Eu li coisas como Sete escolhas: Dando os passos para uma vida nova depois de perder uma pessoa amada, 84 que eram 352 páginas de babação total. Eu voltei e exibi os sintomas clássicos da negação, barganha, raiva, mais denegação ainda, depressão. Eu listei as minhas sete escolhas clássicas e vacilei plausivelmente entre e em meio a elas. Eu ofereci dados etimológicos da palavra aceitação que voltavam no inglês até Wyclif e no limite até o francês languedocien do século XIV. E o terapeuta de luto nadinha"
• [Quote] [Hal's unforced-error statistics seem nearly unreal] "as suas estatisticas de erros nao forcados parecem um erro decimal"
• [Quote] [Hal defeats opponents so completely that they need oxygen] "Três adversários diferentes nos últimos meses tiveram que receber oxigênio nos tempos de descanso"
• • [MYTAKE] [I love this character symmetry, super man outside, lonely and depressive inside]
• [Tennis] [Hal is considered the fourth-best tennis player in the world at seventeen]
• [Addiction] [Hal's secret drug problem extends into compulsions around nicotine and sugar] Like many genetically hard-wired young addicts, Hal has severe compulsion issues around nicotine and sugar.

Language and Postmodern Philosophy

• [Question] [Can total knowledge be reduced to formal language?] If knowledge can be formalized, then someone who memorized the whole English dictionary becomes a plausible candidate for knowing the limits of the world.
  • [Philosophy] [Wittgenstein makes language feel like a boundary of possible understanding] Wittgenstein said "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world", which suggests that understanding language's limits could mean understanding the limits of intelligible reality.
• [MYTAKE] [Hal as the perfection of the Enlightenment values while lacking what makes life worth living] The character is: rich, very high physical health, nation wide ranking at sports, extremely intelligent. But, he lacks ONE VERY IMPORTANT ASPECT, he is not loved. And in the end, that removes all the value of his other achievements.

Family Pain

• [Hal's tennis matches against John Wayne, and its trauma] Playing tennis against someone who is having sex with your mother would create a strange mixture of anger, shame, and emotional confusion.

Mario Incandenza

Disability

• [Definition] [Hypotonia is low muscle tone that can involve reduced strength] Hypotonia is a state of low muscle tone[1] (the amount of tension or resistance to stretch in a muscle), often involving reduced muscle strength.
• [Body] [Mario has major physical deformities]

Social Separation

• [MYTAKE] [Mario's disability separates him from society and helps preserve him] His deficiency separates him from ordinary society, which makes him the least broken character and echoes Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that society corrupts human beings. This is also related to me, since I didn't do drugs, debauchery or any other major sin, unlinke other men that I have met through out my life.

Humor and Innocence

• [Relationship] [Mario's interactions with Hal are beautiful and funny]
• [Mario is fanatically devoted to listening and observing]
• [Quote] [Mario's birth left him with lifelong physical challenges] "Enfim, a gestação incompleta e o parto aracnoidal de Mario II deixaram o menino com certos desafios físicos vitalícios e formadores-de-caráter. O tamanho era um deles, sendo que ele na sexta série era mais ou menos do tamanho de um bebê e com dezoito ou + estava numa escala mais ou menos entre a dos elfos e a dos jóqueis."
• [Quote] [Mario's posture and childhood falls explain his damaged nose] "corpo inclinado bem para a frente como que contra o vento, bem no limite de cair de cara no chão, o que quando criança ele fazia com alguma frequência, tivesse ou não levado um empurrãozinho do seu irmão Orin. As constantes quedas para a frente ajudam a explicar por que o nariz de Mario era severamente amassado e consequentemente se abria para os dois lados do rosto mas não se erguia do plano da face"
• [Quote] [Mario repeatedly falls while cleaning but finishes the room] "It took the bradykinetic Mario all night and two bottles of Ajax Plus to clean the room with his tiny contractured arms and square feet; the 18's girls in the rooms on either side could hear him falling around in there and picking himself up, again and again; and the finally spotless room in question had been locked ever since"
• • [MYTAKE] [Epitomization of IJ humour, dark and absurd] He is literally cleaning the rest of the bodies of his father, after he blew up his head.

Orin Incandenza

Sex and Avoidance

• [Speculation] [Orin's sex addiction may be connected to an incest like pattern with Avril] After all his main target is 'young mothers of small children'
  • [Observation] [Avril's strained access to Orin highlights their damaged relationship] Avril has to call Orin's interviewer to find out anything about her own son.
• [Addiction] [Orin leaves his substance phase when he discovers sex]
• [MYTAKE] [Orin acts terribly because he runs from his inner problems] I am not sure he is simply a terrible person, but he behaves like one: he ignores Mario and did not even attend his father's funeral.

Entertainment Plot

• [Theory] [Orin may have found the Infinite Jest master copy before everyone else] The novel hints that the missing master copy of Infinite Jest may have been hidden with James Incandenza’s buried head. By the time Hal and Gately seem to dig up the grave, it is already gone. Since neither the A.F.R. nor the O.U.S. appears to have secured it, one theory is that Orin reached it first and became the source of the circulating copies.
• [Theory] [Orin may give the Entertainment to the A.F.R.] Near the end, the A.F.R. captures Orin and tortures him with roaches. One theory is that Orin saves himself by telling them where the master copy of Infinite Jest is, or by giving them access to it. If so, the A.F.R. could use the film as a weapon against the U.S./O.N.A.N. government, helping provoke the political collapse hinted at by the novel’s later timeline.

Tennis Failure

• [Quote] [Schtitt sees Orin's football success as a continuation of his tennis cowardice] "Schtitt supôs que Orin tinha dado acidentalmente com uma maneira, naquele jogo americano grotescamente físico e territorial, de legitimar a mesma dependência do único golpe de lob que tinha evitado que ele desenvolvesse a coragem de desenvolver suas áreas mais fracas, que essa indisposição de arriscar um fracasso e uma fraqueza temporários em nome de ganhos de longo prazo tinha sido o verdadeiro herbicida na cenoura do tênis de Orin Incandenza. Puberdade o Kassett, no que se refere ao verdadeiro motivo de se apagar a chama interior do tênis, Schtitt sabia. Os comentários de Schtitt foram recebidos com vigorosos acenos de cabeça e amplamente ignorados na sala de vídeo. Schtitt depois disse a deLint que tinha vários maus pressentimentos sobre o futuro de Orin por dentro.

James O. Incandenza

Foundations

• [James is a tall awkward alcoholic who still married Avril]
• [Avoidance] [James escapes personal failure through filmmaking] His films become a refuge from marital infidelity, tennis failure, and lack of purpose.
• • [MYTAKE] [His film making is completely relatable with my maladaptive day dreaming]
• [Credential] [James has a PhD in optical physics]

Death

• [Suicide] [James modifies the microwave so it works with the door open]
• [Suicide] [James kills himself by putting his head in the microwave]
• • [MYTAKE] [This was one of the funiest parts of the book for me] He is trying to communicate something with this death, I am a genius, but I feel lonely and like a complete failure, that's why I am killing myself.

Son Relationships

• [Detachment] [Hal goes silent when his father's artificial attempt at intimacy is exposed] Another example is Hal's relationship with his father, who once dressed as a therapist to get Hal to open up. When Hal realizes the connection between his father and the wardrobe, he immediately stops talking and becomes mute.
• [MYTAKE] [Hal's speech failure with James captures partial parental closeness] Hal choking whenever he tries to speak to James feels relatable because one can be close to a parent without ever fully speaking to them about your vulnerabilities.

Marriage

• [Quote] [James gives his marriage a C] one night Mario, leaning way forward into the police lock's support, drifted awake to the sound of his father saying that if he had to grade his marriage he'd give it a C
• • [MYTAKE] [How terrible it must be for a kid to hear that]
• [Quote] [James and Avril's marriage is described as conformity and concession] "Como a maioria dos casamentos, o de Avril com o falecido James Icandenza foi o produto final da conformidade com a conecssao"
• • [MYTAKE] [One of my favourite quotes around marriage] For me this explains most marriages in material reality.

Grandfather and Inheritance

• [Quote] [James's father performed as the Man from Glad] "My father acted, throughout our time in California, as both symbol and spokesman for the Glad F.P.R. Co.'s Individual Sandwich Bag Division. He was the first of two actors to portray the Man from Glad. He was inserted several times a month in a mock-up of a car interior, where he would be filmed in a tight trans-windshield shot receiving an emergency radio summons to some household that was having a portable-food-storage problem"

• [MYTAKE] [Cancer of the skull is a family curse in the Incandenzas] The family seems to inherit a sadness connected to achievement, and that kind of achievement-sadness feels curse-like.

Movies

• [Quote] [The Joke turns an art-film audience into its own spectacle] "That is, until the lights went down and the film started up and what was on the wide public screen was just a wide-angled binoculated shot of this very art-film theater's audience filing in with espressos and finding seats and sitting down and looking around and getting adjusted and saying knowledgeable little premovie things to their thick-lensed dates about what the Don't-Pay-To-See-This ad and Bolex cameras probably signified, artistically, and settling in as the lights dimmed and facing the screen (i.e. now themselves, it turns out) with the coolly excited smiles of highbrow-entertainment expectation, smiles which the cameras and screen's projection"
• [Film] [Infinite Jest is James's last attempt to talk to Hal]

Avril Incandenza

• [Quote] [Mario notices that Avril did not cry after James died] 'Mario once said "How come the Moms never cried when Himself passed away? I cried, and you, even C.T. cried. I saw him personally cry.'
• [Biography] [Avril abandoned MIT]
• [Origin] [Avril comes from tiny L'Islet in Quebec]

Charles Tavis

• [Speculation] [Mario is probably C.T.'s son because incest raises the chance of disability]

Personality

• [Quote] [Tavis openly announces his own creepy lurking] Avril said she'd watch him just kind of drift from cluster to cluster and lurk around creepily on the fringe, listening, but that he'd always say, loudly, in some lull in the group's conversation, something like 'I'm afraid I'm far too self-conscious really to join in here, so I'm just going to lurk creepily at the fringe and listen, if that's all right, just so you know,' and so on.
• [Quote] [Tavis's physical smallness seems perspectival rather than endocrine] Like many gifted bureaucrats, Hal's mother's adoptive brother Charles Tavis is physically small in a way that seems less endocrine than perspectival. His smallness resembles the smallness of something that's farther away from you than it wants to be, plus is receding.
• [Quote] [Tavis's appearance is slightly asymmetrical] "His maternal uncle's hair was straight and very precisely combed over, and his little mustache was never quite symmetrical. One eye was also set at a slightly different angle than the other, so that besides holding his hand up to scan"

Tragedy

• [Quote] [Tavis's stadium career collapses after obscene scoreboard misuse] "The bulk of the call for Tavis’s rolling head had come, he’d tell you, when the cameraman in charge of the SkyDome’s Instant-Replay-Video Scoreboard had displayed distant multi-limbed coital images up onto the 75-meter Scoreboard screen, etc. Sometimes in slow motion and with multiple replays, etc. Tavis will admit his reluctance to talk about it, still, after all this time. He’ll confess that his usual former-career summary is to say just that he’d specialized in athletic venues that could safely and comfortably seat enormous numbers of live spectators, and that the market for his services had bottomed out as more and more events were designed for cartridge dissemination and private home-viewing, which he’ll point out is not technically untrue so much as just not entirely open and forthcoming."

Tennis

Michael Pemulis

• [Quote] [Pemulis comes from rough Irish-descended Allston] "ele eh um cara muito casca grossa de Allston, MA uma regiao pobre de Massachussets de descendencia irlandesa"
• [Quote] [Schtitt says Pemulis understands punch on the volley] "mas que o Schtit diz que ele eh o unico jovem aqui agora que sabe verdadeiramente o que quer dizer ter punch no voleio. Isso mostra como ele sabe ser agressivo"
• [Quote] [Pemulis is hardened, experienced, and drug-connected] "Ele eh muito vivido, ja passou por maus bocdados na vida, alem de ser um traficante, por exemplo quando ele sempre olha para os dois lados antes de falar"
• [Quote] [Pemulis looks tougher in practice than in meaningful matches] "ele eh durao, mas tem um sweetspot: o pró-reitor Aubrey deLint diz (publicamente) que ver M. Pemulis em treino v. ver M. Pemulis num jogo de verdade que represente alguma coisa é como conhecer uma menina por e-mail assim tipo por correspondência via e-mail-de-teclado e se apaixonar perdidamente por ela e aí por fim conhecê-la pessoalmente e descobrir que ela tem tipo só um seio enorme bem no meio do peito ou algo assim."

Gerhardt Schtitt

• [Quote] [The true tennis opponent is the self] "O verdadeiro oponente, a fronteira envolvente, é o próprio jogador. Sempre e apenas o eu lá fora, na quadra, para ser enfrentado, combatido, trazido à mesa para acertar os termos. O garoto competidor do outro lado da rede: ele não é o inimigo: ele é mais o parceiro da dança. Ele é a desculpa ou ocasião para se encontrar consigo mesmo."

Ennet House

Don Gately


Antithesis of Hal

• [Contrast] [Hal is intellectually brilliant while Gately is intellectually limited]
  • [Failure] [Gately could not continue football because he could not get a D in English]
• [Contrast] [Gately rises mentally while Hal descends]
• [Contrast] [Hal has every reason to be happy while Gately has every reason to be unhappy]

Work

• [Comparison] [Gately's Ennet House labor resembles Manchester by the Sea] There's human waste in the showers on a daily fucking basis; Stavros lets him use an industrial hose before he has to clean with mop, brushes, solvents, and mask.

Childhood

• [Recovery] [Sobriety eventually forces Gately to face why he used substances] They neglect to tell you that after the urge to get high vanishes and you have been Substanceless for six or eight months, you begin to get in touch with why you used substances in the first place.
• [Family] [Gately's father left before he was born and his mother's partner beat her] Don's organic father was an Estonian immigrant and wrought-iron worker who broke his mother's jaw and left Boston while she was pregnant; her later live-in lover regularly beat her where bruises would not show.
• [Addiction] [Gately becomes addicted at age nine while trying to protect his mother from vodka] He drank her vodka when she passed out because he did not want her to become addicted.

Jail

• [Quote] [Gately survives Billerica through size, restraint, and decisive violence] "At twenty-four he'd done 17 months at Billerica for assaulting two bouncers in a nightclub — it was more like he'd beaten the second bouncer bloody with the unconscious body of the first — and he knew quite well he could get by in a Commonwealth lockdown. He was too big to fuck or fuck with and not interested in fucking with anyone else: he did his time stand-up and gave nobody any provoking cause; and when the first couple hard guys had come after him for his canteen cigarettes he'd laughed it off with ferocious jolliness, and when they came back a second time Gately beat them half to death in the corridor behind the weight room where he could be sure plenty of other guys could hear it, and after that one incident was out of the way he could simply get by and not get fucked with"

Drug Stories

• [Quote] [Gately remembers a drunken shooting as movie-like unreality] 'I tell you, what still gets me is we was so drunk we didn't even somehow take it seriously, because everything seemed like a movie when I got real drunk. I still wish we'd thought to take him to the hospital right away. We could of piled him in. He wasn't dead yet even though he around in circles like some kind of O.D., thought if we could keep him walking til the wagon came he'd ink then he was dead. Blood all over everybody. The gun wasn't more than an old lking-him-around idea into our head d trying to put her stockings on and we're yelling to the guy that' e and he we this. This is the best window. But you learned a lesson.’ at time.’ of their legs shorter than the other?’ ere each leg was shorter than the other.’ han it?’

us on. He said the point was an AA point, that it defied sense and explaining and you just had to accept it on faith at creepy Randy guy with the white wig was backing him up with a very straight face. McDade said she walked like a metr ing fun of us, but I still thought it was funny.’ e.’ 's really interface if you're in here. How come with the veil?’ ars in.’ eformed? It's nothing that sticks way out, an say it. Are you, like, missing something?’ ng, for Varying Lengths. The sked Pat and Tommy S. and still the thing I don't get is why join a fellowship just to hide? I can see if somebody is li w, hideously — and they've been hiding away in the dark all their life, and they want to Come In and join a fello al and everybody can Identify because they all spent their whole life hiding also, and you join a fello s that the urge to hide is offset by a giga ve, you crave connection and society, you know intellectually that you' when you talk about this shit.’ u hide your deep need to hide, and you do this out of the need to appear to other people as if you have the stren nd. We all walked him ar be OK. By the end we was dragging him, I th .25. People was yelling at us to pile him in and take him to the hospital, but we'd got this wa s, to hold him up and walk him in circles, the girl's screaming an d shot him how we were going to off with his map and so on and so forth, till the keep called an ambulance and they cam as dead as a stick.’

Home Invasion

• [Recovery] [Gately refuses narcotic painkillers after being seriously injured] During a violent home invasion, Gately is seriously injured but refuses narcotic painkillers to maintain sobriety.

Joelle Van Dyne

Foundations

• [Alias] [Joelle is Madame Psychosis]
• [Joelle is a genius]
  • [Addiction] [Joelle shows that intelligent people can also become addicted]
  • [Credential] [Joelle enters the Film Studies PhD program at MIT]
• [Beauty] [Joelle is treated as the prettiest girl of all time]

U.H.I.D.

• [Quote] [Deformity creates shame about the urge to hide] 'Well Mr. Gately what people don't get about being hideously or improbably deformed is that the urge to hide is offset by a gigantic sense of shame about your urge to hide
• [Interpretation] [U.H.I.D. supports the decision to hide openly]

Accident

• [Trauma] [Joelle's mother throws chemicals at Joelle's father but hits Joelle instead] The accident leaves Joelle disfigured.

Genius

• [Quote] [Madame Psychosis can explain uranium enrichment on air] "Uma vez no ano passado Madame Psicose fez o engenheiro estagiario escrever o processo de transformar num laboratorio domestico o po de oxido de uranio n bom e velho e fissionavel U-235. Ai ele leu o texto no ar entre um poema de Braka e uma analise de tatica de defesa dos steelers"
• • [MYTAKE] [Humourisly Encyclopedid]

Kentucky

• [Quote] [Joelle remembers her father saving a bleeding man's life] 'I saw an old boy cut his hand off with a chainsaw cutting back brush back of the Cumberland when I was fishing with my Daddy. Like to have bled to death right there. My Daddy had to use his belt. Before he got it tied off the blood came like that, with the pulse. My Daddy got him to the hospital in his car, like to saved his life. He'd had some training. He could save lives like that.’

Narrative Position

• [Relationship] [Joelle was Orin's lover and James's optical beloved] Joelle foi a única amante de Orin Incandenza por vinte e seis meses e a amada óptica do pai dele por vinte e um
• [MYTAKE] [Joelle sits at the intersection of many parts of the novel] She links Boston, drugs, mental illness, filmmaking, MIT, and the Incandenza family.

Kate Gompert

• [Identity] [Kate Gompert is a tennis player]
• [Depression] [Kate has attempted suicide four times in three years]
• [21 years old]
• [Quote] [Kate says institutional safety measures do not remove the suicidal feeling] A maneira como ela balançou a cabeça de repente foi veemente, exasperada. 'O sentimento é o motivo pelo qual eu quero. O sentimento é a razão pela qual quero morrer. Estou aqui porque quero morrer. Por isso estou num quarto sem janelas e com gaiolas sobre as lâmpadas e sem fechadura na porta do banheiro. Por que levaram meus cadarços e meu cinto. Mas noto que eles não tiram o sentimento, não é?
• • [MYTAKE] [This reminds me of maldaptive imagination] Sometimes it feels like, it doesn't matter, you can put woman, family, friends, work, money. None of this make me stop wanting to do maladaptive imagination, in the same way that Kate Gompert doesn't stop wanting to die.

Terrorists

Remy Marathe

Reasonable Person

• [MYTAKE] [Marathe's suffering makes his political commitments intelligible] Marathe's wife had been in an irreversible coma for fourteen months, and he had learned a detached form of rest after losing his legs to a U.S.A. train.
• [Politics] [Marathe's wife links his anti-Americanism to the Great Concavity] His wife was born without a skull, a common side effect of proximity to the Great Concavity, which explains his hatred of capitalism and the U.S.A.

Purpose

• [Purpose] [Marathe and the A.F.R. have a clear aim beyond hedonism] They are among the few characters with a coherent purpose outside pleasure-seeking.
• [MYTAKE] [Society is so dystopian, that wheel chairs assassins seem to be most reasonable people]

Hugh Steeply

• [Biography] [Steeply is recently divorced] Near midnight Steeply tells Marathe that he had been on personal Marital Leave over his recent divorce.