Infinite Jest: Chapter 75 Summary & Analysis

Barry Loach is certainly not the only character whose family appears to be cursed. Indeed, perhaps a family “curse” is really just a way of conceptualizing the manner in which misfortune breeds misfortune, creating cycles of misery where the problems of one family member are passed on to others.

This sad and profound passage considers the fact that people are more likely to give money to homeless people than they are to interact with them. This shows that dehumanization does not always take the form of shunning or violence; it can take the form of charity and pity. Again, Mario is shown to be the moral compass of the novel, as he is the only person who does not participate in this dehumanization.

This scene is a reworked version of the final part of George Orwell’s 1984, in which the main character, Winston Smith, betrays his lover Julia under torture. It is possible that the “her” Orin is referring to is either Luria or Avril (and there is even a controversial theory that Avril and Luria are the same person). Most importantly, the line “Do it to her” indicates that Orin has surrendered to his torturers, and will agree to tell them how to find the master copy. This means that the A.F.R. “win” the battle to get the copy and presumably unleash it on the U.S., although this is never explicitly confirmed in the novel.

Recall that when Poor Tony was employed to dress as a decoy during the Antitois’ acid attack on the Canadian Minister of Inter-O.N.A.N. Trade, the attacker and decoys all wore red. While we cannot be sure that these two parts of the story are related, the shared detail of the red outfits reminds readers of how interconnected all the different parts of the story are.

Again, it emerges that Bobby C is likely the same C that died after taking Drano-laced heroin with Poor Tony, and whose body Tony left behind a dumpster. Rather than concluding with a dramatic final scene, the novel curls into itself, braiding together final aspects of the narrative (including the above revelation that the Swiss hand model is Luria P——).

This surreal and horrifying scene has another direct reference to a famous dystopian novel: Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (later turned into a film by Stanley Kubrick). In the book, the main character, Alex, is punished for rape and murder by having his eyes clamped open and injected with liquid while he is forced to watch a film featuring sex and violence.

Here the word “ultraviolence” confirms the connection to Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, where the term was first used.

The final scene of the novel featuring Gately on the beach is anti-climactic yet also eerie and rather lovely. At the same time, this is not the true ending of the novel in terms of its chronological narrative, because some parts—including the opening chapter—are set in the years after this final scene takes place. The book is thus “infinite” in the sense that it is not contained by the novel as a frame, but stretches out into the future. This sense of expansiveness is intensified by the fact that it is left up to the reader to piece together what the novel’s chronological ending actually is.