Infinite Jest

Don Gately is a secondary protagonist in Infinite Jest. While the main story is focused on Hal and the Enfield Tennis Academy, Don fulfills a similar function with respect to the Ennet House addiction rehabilitation center. He is the character around which this portion of the novel pivots. He also functions as a counterpoint to Hal. If Hal was born in the lap of luxury and feels alienated despite being given everything—wealth, talent, intelligence—then Don’s life is filled with faltering missteps and tragedy. Don was born into a poor family and his mother was abused by a series of lovers. While he also had a promising sports career, he lost everything due to a growing dependence on drink and drugs. Don never had much but still lost everything, while Hal has everything and loses very little in a material sense. Don’s story illustrates the ways in which poverty and chance can amplify the extant problems in society.

Don turned to crime at a young age to satisfy his craving for narcotics. His criminality grew steadily worse, from small scale burglaries to accidentally killing a man during a botched operation. In the midst of this, he witnesses the brutal torture of an associate and becomes completely addicted to drugs. Don’s reaction to this terrible moment in his life is to take even more drugs. Having never been taught how to process his emotions or deal with pain, he turns to the only system he understands. Don’s painful memories and subsequent problems with addiction illustrate how people self-medicate to cope with overwhelming problems that they cannot hope to comprehend. The brutal violence of Fackelmann’s murder contrasts with the obscenely pleasant feeling of taking drugs, showing why Don would rely on the latter to deal with the horrific memories of the former.

Ennet House provides Don with something like salvation. He opts to join the recovery program to avoid jail, but he eventually discovers real value in the recovery programs that he attends. Like many of the patients at Ennet House, he replaces one addiction with another, and soon he cannot imagine his life without the sense of structure and support that the programs provide. Not only that, but he learns to help others in his role as a live-in staffer at the facility. Don is able to use his experience to guide others through recovery and—for the first time—he feels like he is genuinely helping others. Unfortunately for Don, the tragedy of circumstance that defines his life means that this cannot last long. He steps into a fight to defend one of the residents and is shot by the attackers. He is sent to the hospital, where he endures terrible physical pain while reliving the most brutal moments from his past. By fate and circumstance, Don is punished for trying to help. For all of his crimes in the past, Don is brought down by his sense of loyalty and his need to help others. Don is a good person to whom bad things happen.

James Incandenza is a filmmaker, a physicist, and the founder of the Enfield Tennis Academy. He is also a father and a husband—but he has an alcohol addiction and eventually dies by suicide using a microwave. James’s life is a series of addictions and interests that either dominate his life or pass him by. Tennis was a passing phase; after giving up a youth career in tennis and later founding a tennis academy, James quickly lost interest in both pursuits. Likewise, his sons were often incidental to his life. The only son he could communicate with for any length of time was Mario, whom he used as a lackey during film productions more than an actual son. Unfortunately for James, addiction proved to be a more lasting issue. Though he tried to give up alcohol in the later years of his life, the pressure of doing so forced him to confront the unbearable reality of being sober. His clinical depression was another part of James’s life that he could not leave behind. Eventually, the sum total of James’s interests and afflictions overwhelmed him.

Perhaps James’s defining interest was filmmaking. Though not a commercial success, and though his films were only critically relevant in the wake of his death, James was a relentless producer of short films, feature length films, and documentaries. He made a huge number of films (which are listed in the endnotes) but never quite managed to produce anything that satisfied his artistic vision. Joelle, a frequent actor in James’s films, does not regard his work as particularly interesting, but she cannot deny that James possessed some small, intense kernel of artistry that she found fascinating. Likewise, Hal could never emotionally connect with his father but cannot stop himself from watching James’s films because something about them is hypnotic.

The culmination of James’s artistic ambitions was only acknowledged after his death. James directed a film that is so powerful that it hooks the viewer to a fatal degree. Anyone who watches the film, colloquially referred to at the Entertainment, is either caught in a constant loop of rewatching the film until they die or is willing to kill themselves to watch it again. The Entertainment is weaponized by Quebecois separatists who recognize the Entertainment’s immense power, if not its artistry. However, James made the film as a way to connect with his alienated son Hal. James was disturbed by Hal’s inability to communicate, so he produced a film that is so engaging that it ironically turns every viewer into the kind of uncommunicative husk that James imagined his son to be. The painful irony of the Entertainment is that it is James’s greatest achievement but not in the way he intended it to be. The Entertainment is the most powerful piece of media ever created, but it does nothing to forge a bond between father and son. Instead, the film destroys and harms others. Ultimately, James’s inability to realize his artistic ambitions is an extension of his inability to communicate with his family. James was a sad, alienated man whose life was a constant, struggling search for meaning that was never quite resolved.

Joelle Van Dyne is a mysterious figure. She spends most of the novel hidden behind a veil and goes by several names and aliases. To most people, she is Joelle. To listeners of WYYY, she is Madame Psychosis. To her friend Molly, she is also known as Lucille Duquette. To Orin, she is the Prettiest Girl Of All Time. These various identities hint at Joelle’s deeper struggle. She does not know who she is or how she fits into the world, so she wears various disguises and adopts various identities as a way to find her niche. Being able to switch identities allows Joelle to feel as though she is in control of herself and her fate.

When she cannot find any place that satisfies her, however, she turns to drugs, suicide, and then rehabilitation centers. In doing so, she abandons the notion of control that she had over her life and her identity, giving herself up to the raw, honest sincerity of the rehabilitation programs. Not accidentally, each rehabilitation meeting involves members standing up and introducing themselves. Joelle, in her quest to understand her own identity, envies this honesty. For all of Joelle’s mystery and shifting identity, she only really feels satisfied and fulfilled when she is able to be part of a group that shares their honest, open selves with one another.

Hugh Steeply works for the Office of Unspecified Services, part of the United States’ intelligence apparatus. Though he is a large, middle-aged, balding man, he is sent undercover by the Office of Unspecified Services as a female reporter. In his guise as Helen Steeply, he meets with Marathe, interviews Orin, and visits the Enfield Tennis Academy. Steeply’s willingness to wear an absurd disguise illustrates his loyalty to his country. In his conversation with Marathe, he is a fierce defender of American ideas of freedom. He debates the Quebecois terrorist about the morality and the value of his country’s actions, as well as the actions he undertakes on behalf of his country.

In this respect, Steeply and Marathe are two sides of the same coin. They view loyalty and patriotism in a similar fashion. However, Marathe approaches the position from the perspective of someone who has lost his homeland, and Steeply approaches the position from the perspective of someone who wants to defend his homeland’s domineering actions. One is a wounded patriot; the other is a defensive patriot. Steeply never resolves the doubts Marathe plants in his mind, nor does he succeed in tracking down the Entertainment’s master copy. The fact that he attempts to do so, however, suggests that Steeply is one of the more optimistic characters in the novel. While the other characters are alienated or disillusioned with the institutions in their society, Steeply feels there is—at the very least—something worth defending.

Steeply’s other role is to question the nature of gender in the novel. When disguised as Helen, Steeply is able to convince many people that he is in fact a woman. Steeply is not transgender; he is a man in disguise as a woman because he is ordered to do so by his government. However, the other characters’ reactions to Helen Steeply blur the traditional binary gender distinctions. Characters are willing to accept that Helen Steeply is a woman—though some, like Joelle, admit that she is an ugly, strange-looking woman. The idea of womanhood or femininity, in this respect, is fluid. Hugh Steeply disguised as Helen does not believe himself to be a woman, but other characters are able to project the idea of a woman onto him. In a novel where so many characters defy stereotypes, Helen Steeply’s role is to illustrate the subjective and blurred nature of gender as it exists in society. Like so many other aspects of existence in Infinite Jest, gender is a subjective experience masquerading as a universal truth.