Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Families With Low Self-Esteem

I liked what Marlon K. Bain says about abuse, saying that abuse can manifest itself in two very different ways, the more conventional way and the “loving” way. Avril and James were guilty of trying to act like loving, caring, understanding parents that their actions lost any true love or compassion or understanding (Hal says that Avril thinks she understands him but really there’s nothing about him to understand since Hal is an empty person). Their parenting is focused more on themselves and less on the betterment of their children.
The point is that the abuse that M.K. Bain talks about can be related to the abuse of an addiction. Ennet House shows the gritty, cruel side of abuse, and of course ETA is the more docile side of abuse (of course the Incandenzas run ETA). The students are taken to a school focused on this game they are supposed to love, but because the students have to live up to the expectations of a good tennis player the fun and love of the game is gone and in the end the moves are there but the game becomes devoid of feeling.

On another note, what was with Blood Sister? I didn’t understand why they went into so much detail about the film which was basically just ridiculous. I’m guessing that it’s supposed to parallel another character (Orin? Someone at Ennet House?) who will/has done the same thing as Blood Sister (maybe not exactly the same, but something pretty bad like that) and this is just setting up for it. I wouldn’t put it past David Foster Wallace to do it.

Oh and Poor Tony’s back! I thought that it was strange how the first thing he thinks about after waking up is all sex related somehow. This is probably his most uplifting story. But then the Creature came after him (are the Creature and the Thing the same “person”?). This part felt like a nightmare or something, being chased by a “creature” with sharp nails/claws and no one will help. It says that Poor Tony was out of rehab and “Withdrawn” so I’m not sure if this is real or if it’s just some sort of weird hallucination-side effect of something. It was pretty strange all together.

Finally, Marathe is in Ennet House, part of a cult, and missing a bunch of teeth. I felt bad for him because I had no idea what was going on and the only guy who’d talk to him would only tell him about the robots in control. This whole reading was just filled with lots of crazy stuff that I wasn’t totally sure what to think of. Hopefully this is really the beginning of a series of answers in the story instead of just more questions and crazy twists.

1 Comments:

Blogger Alexander Dove Lempke said...

Love the post title.

I don't know if this is relevant, or even intentional, but "Blood Sister" would be initialed "BS." Knowing Wallace (not that I do), it's probably intentional, but could be more of a little joke on his part than a meaning-conveying device.

5/02/2007 10:56 PM  

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