Institutional Control vs. Rebellion Theme Analysis

Infinite Jest is set among a number of prominent institutions, which—rather than simply existing in the background—play a prominent and powerful role in the lives of the characters and the narrative as a whole. These institutions include Enfield Tennis Academy (E.T.A.), the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). In a more abstract sense, Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.), the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.), and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) are also important “institutions” in the novel, although they lack the physical structure of the former three. Throughout the novel, the characters struggle against the demand to submit to and be controlled by the institutions of which they are members. The novel ultimately takes a profoundly ambivalent attitude toward institutional control, suggesting that while submitting to the control of institutions is sometimes necessary, it is never harmless.

E.T.A. and Ennet House are twinned institutions in the novel. They are next to each other, have similar names, and both require extreme forms of submission from their members. The proximity of their buildings means that the characters at each residence often interact, which makes the parallels between the institutions all the more prominent. At E.T.A., students are required to follow an intense training regime that can have the effect of making them play in a robotic manner: “There’s surprisingly little thought. Coaches tell serious players what to do so often it gets automatic.” Being a highly skilled tennis player means dismissing or suppressing one’s own thoughts in order to behave in an almost mechanical way.

Similarly, Ennet House and Alcoholics Anonymous require complete submission from members in order to prove their commitment to sobriety. Behind this is the idea that addicts’ minds are controlled by their Substance of choice, and thus in order to counteract this control, extreme submission to another form of control is necessary. Some characters in the novel find that this is the only way to effectively resist the temptation of substance abuse and remain sober. Again, this encourages a kind of robotic behaviour: “When people with AA time strongly advise you to keep coming you nod robotically and keep coming.” Although such total submission may be unappealing, for many addicts the only other choice is allowing their addiction to consume them to the point of death. This leads to the paradoxical maxim regarding submission to AA ideology: “It’s all optional; do it or die.”

Despite the high stakes of refusing to submit to the institutional control of sobriety programs, many characters still rebel against this control. A section of the novel that takes the form of transcripts of conversations between the Executive Director of Ennet House Patricia Montesian and various patients explores the resistance and rebellion that occurs among Ennet House residents. One resident protests, “So what is this? You’re ordering me to pray? Because I allegedly have a disease? I dismantle my life and career and enter nine months of low-income treatment for a disease, and I’m prescribed prayer?” Another exclaims: “I’m on a month’s Full-House Restriction for using freaking mouthwash? Newsflash: news bulletin: mouthwash is for spitting out! It's like 2% proof!” Even while the residents at Ennet House may desperately desire to overcome their addictions, they still resist the overbearing forms of submission demanded by the institution.

Other institutions in the novel—namely A.F.R.—are formed around rebellion against a larger institution (in A.F.R.’s case, O.N.A.N.). A.F.R. is “pretty much Québec’s most dreaded and rapacious anti-O.N.A.N. terrorist cell.” Its members hope to secure the master copy of the Entertainment and mass-distribute it across the U.S. as an act of terrorism. Yet despite being united by the goal of rebellion, A.F.R. demands its own forms of extreme submission from its members. The most obvious and horrifying example of this is that A.F.R. members are required to lie on train tracks in order to injure their legs and end up as wheelchair users (the name of the organization means “Wheelchair Assassins” in French).

The symbiotic relationship between institutional control and rebellion exposed by A.F.R. is particularly explored through A.F.R. member Rémy Marathe. The narrator notes that “A.F.R. believed Marathe functioned as a triple agent.” In reality, however, Marathe is a quadruple agent who is also betraying A.F.R. itself. Marathe’s role in the novel suggests that one (rather extreme) way of dealing with the demand for submission to institutional control is to perform this control to multiple institutions, which inherently means secretly rebelling against them. At the same time, Marathe is a rather exceptional case. For most characters in the novel, submission to institutional control is difficult to escape, even in the context of simultaneous rebellion against institutions.