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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Key Examples in Infinite Jest
Satire
Explanation and Analysis—Corporate Dystopia:
The novel is a satire of late-stage capitalism and corporatization. Set in the near future from the time when Wallace was writing (around the early 2000s), the novel paints a less shocking picture of a dystopian future than many works of speculative fiction, like George Orwell's 1984 or Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games series. Wallace offers up a world that has become a slightly more extreme version of the one readers already know. Most of the absurdity is linked explicitly or implicitly to federal deregulation and the unchecked growth of corporations such that every element of public life is driven by profit and branding.
Related Themes:
Chapter 27
Explanation and Analysis—Nixon Video-Faces:
In Chapter 27, Wallace describes the rise and fall of video calling in his imagined near-future. He uses an allusion that helps connect the comedic failure of "videophony" to his larger satire of a vanity-obsessed culture:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[A]lmost 60% of respondents who received visual access to their own faces during videophonic calls specifically used the terms untrustworthy, unlikable, or hard to like in describing their own visage’s appearance, with a phenomenally ominous 71% of senior-citizen respondents specifically comparing their video-faces to that of Richard Nixon during the Nixon-Kennedy debates of B.S. 1960.
Related Themes:
Chapter 50
Explanation and Analysis—Boston Institutions:
Among other things, the novel is a loving satire of Boston institutions and politics. For example, a playful footnote in Chapter 50 explains the meaning of "the Storrow 500:"
Unlock with LitCharts A+Local argot for Storrow Drive, which runs along the Charles from the Back Bay out to Alewife, with multiple lanes and Escherian signs and On- and Off-ramps within car-lengths of each other and no speed limit and sudden forks and the overall driving experience so forehead-drenching it’s in the metro Police Union’s contract they don’t have to go anywhere near it.
Related Themes:
