Infinite Jest: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. This chapter begins in the first person, in African-American Vernacular English. The narrator, Clenette, describes someone called Wardine whose mother beats her. Wardine’s mother’s boyfriend, Roy Tony, molests her. Clenette’s mother says Wardine’s mother is “not right in the head.” A boy called Reginald loves Wardine and tries to help her, but also tries to pressure her into having sex with him. Roy Tony, who is on parole and wears an ankle bracelet, is also Wardine’s father’s brother. Clenette is Wardine’s half-sister; Wardine tells Clenette and Reginald that if they tell their mothers what’s happening to her, she will kill herself.

Four years ago Roy Tony killed someone out of love for Clenette’s mother. Clenette doesn’t tell her mother about Wardine, but Reginald does in order to save Wardine from being beaten again. Reginald plans to confront Roy Tony, and Clenette fears that Roy Tony will kill him if he does so. Then Clenette will be the only one left with the secret. At the end of the passage, she says she is pregnant.

The narrative switches back to the third person. In 8th grade, Bruce Green falls in love with a stunningly beautiful girl in his class called Mildred Bonk. By 10th grade, Mildred becomes part of a crew at their high school who smokes cigarettes and weed, drinks alcohol, and skips class. By the time they are 18, Bruce and Mildred live together with their baby daughter, two other couples, and a drug dealer named Tommy Doocey. Mildred gets high in the afternoon and watches entertainment cartridges, while Bruce works at Leisure Time Ice. For a while their life is “more or less one big party.”