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Mood
Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Pests and Fumigation:
Pests like cockroaches and mice are a motif in the novel. In Chapter 15, which covers Tiny Ewell's stint in rehab, a nurse uses a metaphor that helps illuminate what the pests are doing in the novel:
He’d kept noticing mice scurrying around his room, mice as in rodents, vermin, and when he lodged a complaint and demanded the room be fumigated at once and then began running around hunched and pounding with the heel of a hand-held Florsheim at the mice as they continued to ooze through the room’s electrical outlets and scurry repulsively about, eventually a gentle-faced nurse flanked by large men in custodial whites negotiated a trade of shoes for Librium, predicting that the mild sedative would fumigate what really needed to be fumigated.
Related Themes:
Chapter 33
Explanation and Analysis—Brands and Logos:
Allusions to real brands and logos are a motif in the novel, contributing to the novel's satirical representation of corporate power. A moment in Chapter 33 demonstrates just how saturated the novel's world is with advertising:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Pemulis, w/ aid of 150 mg. of time-release Tenuate Dospan, almost danced a little post-transaction jig on his way up the steps of the otiose Cambridge bus, feeling the way W. Penn in his Quaker Oats hat in like the 16th century must have felt trading a few trinkets to babe-in-the-woods Natives for New Jersey, he imagines, doffing the nautical cap to two nuns in the aisle.
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Chapter 45
Explanation and Analysis—Environmental Blight:
Environmental blight is a motif in the novel. In Chapter 45, Mario's Interdependence Day film uses allusive newspaper clippings (both real and made up) to draw special attention to the relationship between O.N.A.N. politics and the decline of the environment:
Unlock with LitCharts A+ANOTHER LOVE CANAL?—24-point Superheader; TOXIC HORROR ACCIDENTALLY UNCOVERED IN UPSTATE NEW HAMPSHIRE—16-point Header-sized Subheader;
‘New Hampshire environmental officials yesterday flatly denied that vast collections of drums leaking industrial solvents, chlorides, benzenes and oxins had been quote “stumbled on” by 18 federal EPA staffers playing a casual game of softball east of Berlin, NH, claiming instead that the corroded receptacles had been placed there against statute by large men with white body suits and short haircuts in long shiny trailer trucks with O.N.A.N.’s official crest, a sombreroed eagle with a maple leaf in its mouth, stencilled on the sides...
Related Themes:
Chapter 69
Explanation and Analysis—Body Horror:
Hyperbolic body horror is a widespread motif in the novel. The novel uses intensely detailed descriptions of "abnormal" bodies to invite both disgust and morbid fascination, especially with disabled and gender non-comforming bodies. One example is Mario's hereditary disability. Wallace repeatedly emphasizes his stature, the shape of his head, his mouth full of second bicuspids, his inability to feel pain, his childhood incontinence, and more. The novel presents Mario's body as the monstrous product of a near-incestuous affair between Avril and Charles Tavis.
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Chapter 71
Explanation and Analysis—Incest:
Incest and sexual abuse are a motif in the novel. While the accounts of this kind of abuse are harrowing if they are true, they are also entangled with the novel's use of unreliable narration. For example, in Chapter 71, Molly relates secondhand the story of the night Joelle's family secrets came to light:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The low-pH Daddy’s enormous stress had apparently erupted, right there at the table, with his grown daughter’s white meat between his tines, in the confession that he’d been secretly, silently in love with Madame Psychosis from way, way back; that the love had been the real thing, pure, unspoken, genuflectory, timeless, impossible; that he never touched her, wouldn’t, nor ogle, less out of a horror of being the sort of mid-South father who touched and ogled than out of the purity of his doomed love for the little girl he’d escorted to the movies as proudly as any beau, daily...
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