Foil

Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest: Foil 1 key example

Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Erdedy and Pemulis:

One of the novel's many examples of foils can be found in Ken Erdedy and Michael Pemulis. Chapter 2 centers on Erdedy's anxiety while he waits for a fix:

[H]e moved first toward the telephone console, then over toward his intercom module, then convulsively back toward the sounding phone, and then tried somehow to move toward both at once, finally, so that he stood splay-legged, arms wildly out as if something’s been flung, splayed, entombed between the two sounds, without a thought in his head.