David Foster Wallace Incarnations Of Burned Children Summary

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David Foster Wallace’s “Incarnations of Burned Children” shows that blame and remorse is inevitable in any frightening situation. For someone who went through decades of clinical depression himself, Wallace knew the theme of blame and remorse very well (Lipsky). "I don't think that he ever lost the feeling that there was something shameful about this," his father says. "His instinct was to hide it." (Lipsky). This could have added to his reasoning for publishing Incarnations of Burned Children. This story was full of emotion and overwhelmed by great sadness. It was obviously that someone who was struggling could write such a moving piece of work. As someone who was extremely successful throughout their time on earth, David Foster Wallace seemed …show more content…

What does a parent do when they feel like they are completely out of control? When their child is in so much pain but there is nothing that they could have done to prevent the pain from occurring. What is it that they do? They question everything. All of the possible outcomes that could have happened if they had just been there a couple minutes earlier, or made a different turn. When the mother and father in the story realized that their child was being burned by the scolding hot water just sitting in his diaper they were dumbfounded. When they began to unfasten his diaper they realized “the real water'd fallen and pooled and been burning their baby all this time while he screamed for them to help him and they hadn't, hadn't thought…”. The parents immediately began to feel like if they had just realized that the water was burning in the baby’s diaper they could have changed their child’s fate. Often when a person is clinically depressed they tend to dwell on practically any bad thing that may have affected them in the past. For Wallace he struggled with alcoholism and frequently attend A.A. meetings. These would often help, but they would be followed by another relapse into his depression

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