Infinite Jest: Chapter 71 Summary & Analysis

17 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Don Gately is on medical leave from Ennet House. Someone knocks on the door, and Johnette opens it to find an “upscale kid” requesting a private conversation with anyone in a position of authority. The kid—presumably Hal—speaks with the “oversalivated quality” of someone who has just stopped smoking weed. He explains that he has considered going to a meeting for addicts but that he doesn’t know where any are; he only knows about Ennet House.

(An endnote describes the boys’ locker room at E.T.A. on the same day, 17 November. Possalthwaite is having a breakdown over being unable to trust his family and Pemulis assures him that everything will be okay.) Back in the main narrative, Molly Notkin is being interrogated by O.U.S. operatives about the Entertainment. Molly says that the Entertainment—whose title, “Infinite Jest (V) or (VI)”, is mentioned for the first time here—stars Madame Psychosis as a maternal version of Death. Her face is obscured, and she is naked and pregnant. She delivers a monologue about “death-cosmology” to the audience.

Molly also says that Madame Psychosis’s real mother killed herself using a garbage disposal on Thanksgiving. The Entertainment was made using a Bolex H32 with a peculiar lens. Molly explains that Madame Psychosis only had a sexual relationship with Orin, not James, and that she hadn’t attended James’s funeral. Madame Psychosis has never seen the Entertainment and struggles to believe that it is “lethally entertaining.” Molly asks why the O.U.S. never went to Avril directly to ask about the master copy, and there is no response.

Molly says that Madame Psychosis was able to get James to stop drinking, and that he’d been sober for months by the time of his suicide. She believes that Madame Psychosis’s Substance abuse problems stem from her guilt over James’s suicide, which itself has nothing to do with the Entertainment. She also thinks that Avril planted the bottle of Wild Turkey whisky near James’s dead body because she resented that she herself had never been able to make him stop drinking, but Madame Psychosis had.

Molly explains that Madame Psychosis had always been very close to her own father, a chemist from Kentucky. When Madame Psychosis was a teenager, her father seemed to develop a strange sort of denial that she was growing up and treated her more and more like a child. Once in college, she realized how creepy this was. It reached a horrible climax when she brought Orin home for Thanksgiving and her father started mashing up her turkey into puree. She confronted her father, and he replied by confessing that he was in love with her. He claimed that it had been easy to repress his desire for her when she was a child but that it was more difficult now, and that this is why he continued to treat her like an infant.

Madame Psychosis’s mother suddenly freaked out, announcing that she and her husband had not once had sex since their daughter reached puberty, although she’d never known why. She then confessed that she and her sister had been molested by their own father. She then ran down to her husband’s chemical lab to throw acid on herself. Madame Psychosis, her father, and Orin all ran after her, though not before the mother had drastically disfigured herself with the acid. Molly adds that Madame Psychosis’s real name is Lucille Duquette. After disfiguring herself, Lucille’s mother hurled the flask of acid at her husband, who ducked, allowing the flask to hit and disfigure Lucille instead.

(An endnote describes Pemulis, deLint, Nwangi, and Watson sitting in deLint’s office. DeLint asks Pemulis to explain what happened with Wayne, and Pemulis begins speaking, but soon realizes that the truth has basically already come out. Wayne had taken amphetamines and started going berserk, terrorizing Lateral Alice. Troeltsch then encouraged Wayne to use the intercom system in Alice’s office to issue “public castigations of his various peers and instructors.” DeLint reads out some of the (rather humorous) insults Wayne issued. This includes the statement that Hal is “addicted to everything that is not tied down, cannot outrun him, and is fittable in the mouth.”)

(In the same endnote, Pemulis asks how this will affect his chances of attending WhataBurger, and adds that he has something important he needs to speak about with Avril. DeLint tells Pemulis that E.T.A. believes he dosed Wayne with stimulants against his knowledge. Pemulis will be allowed to finish the term for credit if he wants, but after that point he will be expelled and will not receive any good references. To the shock of everyone present, Pemulis again asks how this will affect his chances of attending WhataBurger.)

After class, Hal travels to an NA meeting all the way out in Natick. He feels silly for going. He thinks about the etymology of the word “anonymous” and practices introducing himself as Mike. The meeting has already started when Hal walks in. The group leader, who is addressing the meeting, uses the phrase “inner child” while another man in the audience named Kevin weeps. To his astonishment, Hal sees that some of the men are holding teddy bears. Kevin cries even more and the leader, Harv, encourages the group to express support for Kevin. The men tell Kevin that they love him, and Hal feels uncomfortable.

Harv asks Kevin to share why he is crying, and Kevin explains that his inner infant is experiencing abandonment. He gives details of his life story, and at this point Hal suddenly realizes that he is Kevin Bain, Marlon Bain’s older brother. Hal had heard that after getting his M.B.A., Kevin made a lot of money in the “pre-Subsidized-Time Simulated Reality craze.” Hal could never have imagined Kevin having the slightest interest in recreational substances. He has never seen someone cry as much as Kevin is crying right now. The men in the group are chanting in support of him. Kevin ends up crawling across the floor as a way of reaching out for love himself.

Gately is lying in the Trauma Wing of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Tiny Ewell is there with him, talking about his personal life, explaining how he first developed a taste for “embezzlement” as a child. He goes on and on, despite the fact that Gately is making no kind of response. Suddenly Gately remembers that he had been offered Demerol by doctors who didn’t read the note in his file reading that he has a history of narcotics dependency and thus shouldn’t be given any. During the emergency surgery he’d had the night before, he was given Toradol-IM, a non-narcotic that does not help much against the pain.

After surgery Gately remembers hearing his doctor telling someone, possibly Pat, that he has a severe infection. Ewell keeps talking, saying that he feels dissatisfied and dismayed by the life he has ended up with and doesn’t know what to do. Gately wants to tell Ewell that he identifies with him but isn’t able to make himself speak. Instead, Gately falls into half-sleep and dreams that he is on the beach in Beverly, MA, while a storm rages and his mother gets beaten up by a man. He ends up in deep water and tries to call to his mother to come to him. When he wakes up, Ewell is gone.

Someone, possibly Joelle, is sponging Gately’s face with a cold washcloth. Later Pat comes in and assures him that everything in the house is all right. Gately is surprised the police haven’t come already. Pat expresses admiration for Gately’s total refusal of narcotic medication. Strangely, at the end of their conversation she bursts into tears. Gately has more dreams and then sees Joelle for real. He tries to “ask his heart” if accepting codeine would count as a relapse, but gets no answer.

Calvin Thrust is in the hospital room now, providing more information on what happened in the aftermath of the fight. Calvin had told Lenz that he would need to submit a urine test on the spot or else voluntarily check himself out of Ennet House for good. It turned out that Pat took Gately to the hospital herself, and that she and Calvin have spoken to the police about the incident. Gately feels annoyed that Calvin turned Lenz out into the night, leaving Gately squarely to blame for whatever injuries or even deaths the Canadians suffered.

Charlotte Treat is embroidering a get-well message for Gately. Calvin says the biggest problem they’re facing is that the gun Gately was shot with is missing. Green says he seized it from one of the Canadians and then dropped it on the lawn. Calvin believes finding the gun will determine whether or not Gately is ruled to have acted in self-defense. Again Gately asks if he killed anyone, and again he receives no answer. When Gately next wakes up Day is there, also giving a lengthy monologue about himself.

Gately keeps having a recurring nightmare about an acne-scarred “Oriental” woman. In another dream, Gately is visited by a “wraith” who explains that it comes from a different dimension. Words appear in Gately’s mind that he does not know or understand, from “alembic” to “chiaroscuro” to “chronaxie” to “de sica neo-real crane dolly.” Gately wonders if the wraith represents his personal understanding of God, or else if it is a manifestation of his addiction. Gately thinks about the TV shows he used to watch in childhood. The wraith says that when it was “animate” it had made film cartridges itself. The wraith speaks with an incredibly complex vocabulary.

The wraith talks about its son, and then mentions its addiction to Wild Turkey. At this point it is clear that the wraith is James Incandenza. The wraith explains that it had always wanted to get through to its youngest son (Hal), and that it had been traumatized by Hal’s muteness. It had also begun to worry that Hal was using Substances. In desperation, the wraith committed itself to sobriety and spent the last 90 days of its life making a film (the Entertainment) that it hoped would be a way to communicate with Hal.

The wraith/James hoped that the Entertainment would be so compelling that it would force Hal out of his anhedonia, like a “magically entertaining toy.” The wraith hoped that the Entertainment would be a way of saying “I’M SORRY” to Hal. Gately thinks of his grim relationship with his own father, but the wraith dramatically interrupts to insist that any communication between a father and son is better than none. Gately wonders why the wraith is there, paying so much attention to someone it doesn’t know. He thinks it’s possible that the wraith doesn’t exist at all, and that its appearance is a manifestation of his addiction.

Gately is still deeply traumatized by the memories of his mother being beaten up by her boyfriend. Three men from White Flag who Gately doesn’t even know that well come to visit; they try to cheer him up by telling dark jokes, making fun of Al-Anon. Gately feels a surge of blinding pain.