Infinite Jest Analysis

American utilitarianism views politics from an angle of “switch” trolley problem, where the sacrifice of the Canadians saves the larger population of America. Conversely, Canadians view politics as “footbridge” problem, symbolizing its population as an outside force sacrificed despite being originally uninvolved in the problem. By endangering Canadians health by exporting their hazardous waste, Americans push the theoretical “fat man,” Canada, onto the tracks to save its people. The American train symbolizes the inevitable harm and economic disenfranchisement faced by the Canadians because of experialist policy, which is the policy of sending American nuclear waste to Canada supported by president Johnny Gentle. As noted by Katherine Hayles’

“The Illusion of Autonomy…”, O.N.A.N’s America runs on the illusion of “interdependence,” where America is actually the one solely dependent on Canada to abject waste (12). Though a cornerstone of American politics, interdependence fails to benefit Canada. This leads to horrific health and environmental problems: Marathe’s wife is born without a skull, there are bugs the size of Volkswagen Beetles, and a gigantic infant prowls around the great concavity where all American waste is thrown. To teach Canadian youth about the political predicament America places on Canada, the AFR use a game called Le Jeu du Train Prochain.
The AFR, or Wheelchair Assassins, became amputees through Le Jeu du Train Prochain, which originated in southwest Quebec. It is played by the sons of miners who work in asbestos, nickel, and zinc mines, and many players are economically disenfranchised because they are orphaned. The game is played in groups of six boys, and thirty-six groups are required for the opening round. Players line up on both sides of an American train track and jump back and forth, and the last person to jump without disfiguring himself or dying wins; those who fail to jump are permanently disgraced from the game. But while becoming disfigured by the train signifies that player has lost, those who are mained accordingly become the directors of the game or members of the AFR. Le Jeu du Train Prochain is a representation of the “footbridge” problem faced by Canadians, although players are the pusher and fat man at their own volition. The game is meant to teach players the futility of the “footbridge” problem in solving predicaments, and how those outside a system should not be sacrificed to save those within a system. Politically, it advocates for direct action instead of relying on diplomacy, which is why the AFR’s tactics target Americans violently instead of politically negotiating.
AFR member Remy Marathe lost both of his legs in Le Jeu du Train Prochain, and has learned the futility of the “footbridge” problem through his loss. Promotion in the AFR is not determined by self-sacrifice during Le Jeu du Train Prochain, restraint, bravery, nor intellect. It does not honor those who decide not to jump, nor does it honor those who have died. The AFR promotes players disfigured by the train, who become directors of the game and members of the AFR because they understand the futility of the “footbridge,” and understand not to involve those outside an ethical dilemma inside it, committing them to direct action. The AFR are aware that Le Jeu du Train Prochain does nothing to slow the advancement of the train, nor does it anything to slow the destructive force of American politics on Canada; it is solely a lesson.
While Canadians are predisposed to health problems at the blame of the American government and the consumerist habits that feed it, Americans are predisposed to media and substance addictions that lead to predeterminism. Their addictions fuel personal isolation and apathy towards and because of their consumer habits, which continue to pose an environmental threat to the Canadians. Before the AFR can combat the toxicities of experialism, or consumerism that causes experialism, they must confront the American apathy enabled by predeterminist cycles, whether addiction or mental illness or familial circumstances.
Interestingly enough, Infinite Jest’s battle against predeterminist apathy is not Wallace’s first foray into determinism, or fatalism specifically. His undergraduate philosophy thesis refuted the fatalist declarations of Richard Taylor from the 1960s, in which he argued that a “cannot” of problem is not therefore a “cannot” of circumstance (Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will 142). But for Infinite Jest’s Americans, all “cannots” of problems create a “cannot” of circumstance, and recursivity stemming from addiction sets characters on lifelong downward spirals. Hal becomes clean only to suffer a mental breakdown during a college interview. Gately, a former drug addict, becomes reconsumed with drugs after hospital staff administers him painkillers. And the ultimate American predeterminist, James Incandenza, finds himself trapped in cycles of pleasing expectations, mental illness, and alcoholism until he ends them by committing suicide.
James O. Incandenza life is fully predetermined by a variety of cycles, and his creation, the “Infinite Jest” cartridge, dooms watchers to an inescapable death by pleasure once it has been started. Wallace introduces readers to Jim’s first person perspective in the “WINTER B.S. 1960 - TUCSON AZ” chapter, where his entire internal monologue consists of the demands and expectations made by his father. From the age of six, the future tense imprisons Jim, and he accomplishes all of the statements dictated to him from an early age. He fulfills the future his father imagined for him, having been told “you are going to be a great tennis player,” “you will be truly great,” and “you will be poetry in motion” (Infinite Jest 158). At no time does Jim stray from his father’s ambitions, nor does he stray from film, a passion of his mother’s. His largest fear during his life is that his son, Hal, never speaks for himself and will suffer his same will-less fate. Jim channels this fear into four films that use deafness as a plot device, including “Cage II” and “Union of Nurses” (Infinite Jest 987). As revealed in the dream sequence between Hal and Jim, Jim also has a fear of his son’s staring habit, and perhaps channeled this into his film, “Cage III,” where spectators at a carnival sideshow turn into large eyeballs (Infinite Jest 988). Fueled by the lure of death to escape his recursive, predetermined life, he creates five versions of “Infinite Jest” in a last attempt to reach Hal before he commits suicide.
“Infinite Jest” is fittingly Jim’s magnum opus, and was only finished once Jim stopped the cycle of his alcoholism.

Its fatal pleasure is the ultimate form of predeterminism, and its material causes viewers to experience pleasure so intense they forgo food, sleep, and using the bathroom until they inevitably die. Watchers will sacrifice anything to continue watching, and, as seen during an experiment conducted by the AFR, their fingers. While the AFR undergoes amputation to teach its members the futility of the footbridge problem, those watching “Infinite Jest” agree to have digits amputated as a result of addiction to self-indulgent media. The AFR’s main objective has become to find and possess the original “Infinite Jest” cartridge, which they could then use as a weapon. By using “Infinites Jest” as a weapon that predetermines its watchers to death, the members of the AFR subject Americans to fates they had no voice in choosing, just like Americans subjected Canadians to health and economic

issues.
The AFR is also interested in the “Infinite Jest” cartridge because, like Jim Incandenza intended, it provides a relief from the recursive predeterminist behaviors fueled by addiction. For Americans, an escape from repetition and recursivity is so universal that no one survives the “Infinite Jest” cartridge. Unlike the rest of his obscure videography, Jim believed “Infinite Jest” so universal and resonant that it had commercial potential. With the cartridge, Jim proposes that the only escape from predeterminism is to succumb to activities that are increasingly more predeterminist, knowing their deadly implications. Jim escapes his recursive life by first adopting an alcohol dependency like his father once had, which creates a new predeterminism fueled by addiction that speeds up his natural death. If he intended to use the “Infinite Jest” cartridge on himself, if he were susceptible to its content, that would add another cycle to speed up death. But recursivity is not just an issue of character and plot; even the narrative structure that Wallace uses in Infinite Jest create a recursive loop that circles back to characters and stories.
Wallace chose to root the chronology of the novel inside of both of Jim Incandenza’s first person narrative chapters. Though the work is recursive without them, these chapters, which occur before companies began subsidizing time, root the work in a familiar America. They are the only chapters which do not take place in Infinite Jest’s speculative future timeline. These moments of time mark the event in the chronology that creates the post-apocalyptic like conditions of “THE YEAR OF THE ADULT DEPENDS UNDERGARMENT,” and create the conditions for a cyclical or recursive novel, an idea proposed by Paul Saint-Amour in his essay “Counterfactual States of America.” Even though the chapters, which recount a lecture Jim’s father gives him and Jim helping his father move a mattress, are simultaneously mundane and revealing, the ambiguity of their inclusion only furthers recursivity. They are the decisive events of Infinite Jest’s speculative fiction, and Saint-Amour’s work states that, “because the decisive event that has broken history into before and after is unrecoverable, post-apocalyptic plots tend to be cyclical” (10). Jim’s narrations as the decisive event allow the conditions for recursivity.
Wallace’s Infinite Jest is purposefully recursive to symbolize the cycles of America’s affliction with addictive substances.

Almost like a computer, Katherine Hayles has described the recursivity by telling readers to, “imagine a huge novel that has been run through the recursive feedback loops of an intelligent agent program and then strung out along the page” (11). These feedbacks are, as suggested by the title of Wallace’s novel, infinite. Similarly, the AFR’s search for the “Infinite Jest” cartridge and attempts to stop the American predeterminism are as recursive and futile as the footbridge problem. According to Jim himself in a dream relayed to his son Hal, the “Infinite Jest” cartridge was buried with his body, “implanted in” his “very own towering father’s anaplastic cerebrum after his cruel series of detoxifications and convolution- smoothing,” supposedly at the request of his wife, Avril (Infinite Jest 31). Most importantly, Jim was buried near the great concavity that brings the Canadians woe; his magnum opus of predeterminism forever destining the Canadian people to terror under their

noses.