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Dialect
Definition of Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given situation, and that of the... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a... read full definition
Key Examples in Infinite Jest
Chapter 22
Explanation and Analysis—Canadian Separatism:
In Chapter 22, Orin calls Hal (a new development in the past year—previously, Orin never called). Right before Hal can hang up, Orin asks a question that foreshadows the revelation that dramatic irony has led him into a terrorist plot:
‘Uh oh. Dinnertime. Triangle’s a-clangin’ over in West.’
‘Hey Hallie though? Hang on. Kidding aside for a second. What all do you know about Separatism?’
Hal stopped for a moment. ‘You mean in Canada?’
Related Themes:
Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Mold and Counterculture:
In Chapter 29, the narrator explains the origin of DMZ (a.k.a. Madame Psychosis), an extraordinarily hard-to-find drug that Pemulis acquires to share with Hal later in the term. The explanation includes several allusions and creates a sense of dramatic irony that is never quite resolved in the novel:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The incredibly potent DMZ is synthesized from a derivative of fitviavi, an obscure mold that grows only on other molds, by the same ambivalently lucky chemist at Sandoz Pharm. who’d first stumbled on LSD, as a relatively ephebic and clueless organic chemist, while futzing around with ergotic fungi on rye. DMZ’s discovery was the tail-end of the B.S. 1960s, just about the same time Dr. Alan Watts was considering T. Leary’s invitation to become ‘Writer in Resonance’ at Leary’s utopian LSD-25 colony in Millbrook NY on what is now Canadian soil.
Related Themes:
Chapter 43
Explanation and Analysis—Class Consciousness:
Chapter 43 offers a portrait of Gately, reformed and running things at Ennet House. Gately seems to find the work fulfilling and has clearly made impressive strides toward his own self-awareness, but the narrator nonetheless laughs at him over a moment of dramatic irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The best noise Gately produces is his laugh, which booms and reassures...He likes that Erdedy, sitting, looks right up at him and cocks his head slightly to let Gately know he’s got his full attention. Gately doesn’t know that this is a requisite for a white-collar job where you have to show you’re attending fully to clients who are paying major sums and get to expect an overt display of full attention. Gately is still not yet a good judge of anything about upscale people except where they tend to hide their valuables.
Related Themes:
Chapter 56
Explanation and Analysis—Therapy Speak:
In Chapter 56, Pemulis overhears part of a therapy session between Stice and Dr. Rusk. Rusk's extended explanation of her diagnosis, "counterphobia," is a parody of Freudian psychoanalysis that is steeped in dramatic irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘GI Joe typically being cathected as an image of the potent but antagonistic father, the “military” man, with “GI” representing at once the “General Issue” of a “weapon” the Oedipal child both covets and fears and a well-known medical acronym for the gastro-intestinal tract, with all the attendant anal anxieties that require repression in the Oedipal phase’s desire to control the bowels in order to impress or quote “win” the mother, of whom the Barbie might be seen as the most obviously reductive and phallocentric reduction of the mother to an archetype of sexual function and availability, ..."
Related Themes:
Chapter 58
Explanation and Analysis—Madame Psychosis Tapes:
In Chapter 58, Mario overhears a recording of Madame Psychosis's voice through the window of Ennet House. This moment is a good example of both dramatic and situational irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Mario is arrested by the quiet but unmistakable sound of a recording of a broadcast of ‘Sixty Minutes More or Less with Madame Psychosis,’ which Mario has never taped a show of because he feels it wouldn’t be right for him but is strangely thrilled to hear someone in Ennet’s thinking enough of to tape and replay.
Related Themes:
Chapter 74
Explanation and Analysis—Into the Annulation-Zone:
Because Wallace uses very close third person narration that gets inside the thoughts of the characters, it becomes increasingly clear throughout the novel that there is no truly reliable narrator. The unreliable narration often creates dramatic irony, such as in Chapter 74, when Joelle tells Steeply about where the Entertainment's Master cartridge might be:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘I used to go around saying the veil was to disguise lethal perfection...So Jim took a failed piece and told me it was too perfect to release—it’d paralyze people. It was entirely clear that it was an ironic joke. To me.’
...
‘If it got made and nobody’s seen it, the Master, it’s in there with him. Buried...I bet you.’
...
‘ That’s the part of the joke he didn’t know. Where he’s buried is itself buried, now. It’s in your annulation-zone. It’s not even your territory. And now if you want the thing—he’d enjoy the joke very much, I think...’
Related Themes:
