Infinite Jest

While reading an argumentative article, one learns to expect stern verbosity and intellectual perplexity. An exception to this norm, Dave Barry pleasantly plays with rhetoric and satire to convey an opinion while simultaneously humoring the reader. His article, “Discover Your House,” is so saturated with jokes that at a first glance, one may feel as if his purpose was simply to make them laugh; it seems as if it provides no real objective. This, however, is his unforeseen genius. Dissecting his…

Modernism vs. Postmodernism: Distinguishing Art, Literature, & Politics In the last century, two of the major art movements Modernism and Postmodernism emerged across the world. Both the Modernist era and the Postmodernist era have their own unique viewpoints and ideology about the different form of art, culture and community. Initiated in the early twentieth century and lasting through the mid 1960’s, Modernism is an art movement which differed and went against the ideas of Realism…

Both Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace are well-known postmodern writers who with their works tried to reflect on modern society and address some of their shortcomings. Both approaches this subject in their own way, focusing on different aspects of the problem they are tackling in each of their stories. David Foster Wallace as well as Dave Eggers touched on the topic of relationships and to be specific troubled and difficult relationships. Eggers in "The Only Meaning of Oil-Wet Water" shows…

classmates read Percy Jackson. Classics gave me hope that my writing might matter someday and, perhaps more powerful, a sense of superiority over my peers that pushed me further. This validation stuck and when I found a friend’s unread copy of Infinite Jest at the start of 11th grade, its length hooked me in. Here was another tome I could wave around and if nobody knew what it was, all the better. As it turned out, I loved it. Immediately, the style, the subject matter, the complicated web of…

During his trip to England, Hamlet encounters Fortinbras’s captain on his mission to request that Fortinbras’s troops may cross the land. The exchange of information during this scene is pivotal to Hamlet’s re-definition, or the “why” he has changed upon his return to Denmark. Fortinbras’s troops are set to recapture a plot of land that has little value except in name. The captain explains, “with no addition,” which highlights the plain nature of his tone regarding what he is about to reveal:…

mourning. Any guilt that the narrator feels for these actions is fleeting, "a feeble and equivocal feeling, and [his] soul remains untouched" (60). The man seems to be almost proud of the idea that hanging Pluto was a sin "beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God" (61). There were no longer any traces of his old docile self, showing no remorse of the death of his wife, only concern about how he should conceal her body. It is this pride that leads to his…

explain the cruel nature. Key dialogue from this graveyard scene indicates humanity’s vulnerability to death, regardless of power or status. For example, Hamlet struggles with facing the reality of Yorick 's death and understanding how someone “of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy”(5.1.191-192) could be reduced to a lonely, empty skull. Hamlet, in bemusement, questions Yorick, “Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table…

the United States of America has created the strongest people the world has ever seen, second to none in all aspects of daily living. America has become the shiny beacon of light across the infinite black sea of ignorance. As a fellow countrymen I hear nay-Sayers speak of my own in only the highest of jests, in which we are cowards, they insult, without knowledge of remembering first the world policing policies America stands by! And to this I say, let’s make them right. It’s only fair, for…

Hamlet term paper Shakespeare uses a lot of imagery in Hamlet to express to the tone of his work to the audience. If Shakespeare didn’t use the imagery, he used then this play wouldn’t be understood like the way it is understood today. The descriptive language he uses really puts us in the shoes of Hamlet. Some examples of his descriptive language are as follows. “Hamlet says his body and the world are contaminated” this speaks to me in that he is trying to say that we as people corrupt this…

that is the tragic change of hero in this story. I was very surprised that he was a very kind-hearted from the period of his infancy. He was especially fond of animals. He even said:" My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions." Fortunately, his wife is a deposition not uncongenial. But then his general temperament and character experienced a radical alteration for the worse. He became moodier and more irritable. I can…