In the modern world there are many different communities with different social values. While there are “rules” that almost everyone can agree on, such as murder or taking another’s property is wrong, there are several rules that, from inside a community, seem immutable or common sense, but from the outside they are flippant, arbitrary, and restricted. In the story “Good People” David Foster Wallace uses the circumstances of an unplanned pregnancy to examine the social isolation that can occur inside of religious communities with strict and impossibly high standards of “goodness”, and the self hatred that occurs when those inside the community fail to meet those standards.
The story “Good People” is shown through the eyes of Lane Dean Jr, and …show more content…
Lane is filled with self hate throughout the story, and it is magnified through the constant mentions of Hell and his frequent mentions of hypocrisy, such as when “He kept thinking also of 1 Timothy and the hypocrite therein who disputeth over words.” (Wallace 153) One of Dr. Marlene Winell’s patients describes these feelings. “After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.” (Tarico, Winell, 2013) One of the greatest examples of Lane’s emotional state is this passage on what he thinks Hell looks like: “It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle—the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other, and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, could not hear each other’s speech as even words or read anything from what their face looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time.” (Wallace 153) The armies represent the two presumed outcomes from Lane’s …show more content…
Throughout the story Wallace gives details to show how faithful or “good” Lane and Sheri are: they met in campus ministries, they both pray frequently, they go to church, as well as Lane’s mother’s referencing to Sheri as good people. However, Lane and Sheri are in still in this situation, and cannot talk to anyone else about their predicament. Through this story, Wallace is showing that there truly are no “good people” and that a society’s standards are arbitrary and it is easy to fall from it’s good graces. Wallace gives evidence to it through Lane’s “moment of grace. He was not a hypocrite, just broken and split off like all men … blind but groping, wanting to please God despite their inborn fallen nature.”(Wallace
The story “Good People” is shown through the eyes of Lane Dean Jr, and …show more content…
Lane is filled with self hate throughout the story, and it is magnified through the constant mentions of Hell and his frequent mentions of hypocrisy, such as when “He kept thinking also of 1 Timothy and the hypocrite therein who disputeth over words.” (Wallace 153) One of Dr. Marlene Winell’s patients describes these feelings. “After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.” (Tarico, Winell, 2013) One of the greatest examples of Lane’s emotional state is this passage on what he thinks Hell looks like: “It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle—the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other, and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, could not hear each other’s speech as even words or read anything from what their face looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time.” (Wallace 153) The armies represent the two presumed outcomes from Lane’s …show more content…
Throughout the story Wallace gives details to show how faithful or “good” Lane and Sheri are: they met in campus ministries, they both pray frequently, they go to church, as well as Lane’s mother’s referencing to Sheri as good people. However, Lane and Sheri are in still in this situation, and cannot talk to anyone else about their predicament. Through this story, Wallace is showing that there truly are no “good people” and that a society’s standards are arbitrary and it is easy to fall from it’s good graces. Wallace gives evidence to it through Lane’s “moment of grace. He was not a hypocrite, just broken and split off like all men … blind but groping, wanting to please God despite their inborn fallen nature.”(Wallace