The Concept Of Boredom In David Foster Wallace's The Pale King

David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel, The Pale King, was pieced together by his publisher, Michael Pietsche, following his suicide back in 2008. Set in an IRS office in the Midwest, the novel’s theme builds upon the concept of boredom. According to Wallace’s understanding of the human condition, Americans are dying from boredom because of a monotonous day-to-day life filled with meaningless rules and regulations. He expands on that idea noting that dullness seems to be an impediment for people’s attention. “Something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people… and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling” that intrinsic pain that comes from dullness, he writes. The novel’s theme of boredom, through the narration of a fictional version of …show more content…
It is evident that Wallace purposely chose each of his characters to possess disparate personalities, and he focuses on how random luck and circumstances directed each of them to “the hamster wheel that is life”. What he did well was Wallace gave each of these characters "voices," or a different style of writing for each character. These unique styles of writing give an insight on the personalities and even the thoughts of the accountants. For example, during the moments prior to Sylvanshine's CPA Exam, the writing emphasizes his sporadic stream of consciousness as well as his anxiety through similar narration by Wallace. Aside from his characterization, Wallace is also over-explanatory in details, whether they be minor or major, such as describing the setting. At times, his narration sounds like a very complex thought process and interesting as well, but in other cases, the story seems to drag on as it gets excessively