IJ study archive

What Happens at the End of Infinite Jest? (or, the Infinite Jest ending explained)

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TL;DR

The canonical fan reconstruction of IJ's "missing year" (Sept 2009). Swartz argues the wraith of James O. Incandenza engineers everything in the final act: he doses Hal with DMZ via his toothbrush to reverse Hal's mold-induced anhedonia, while Orin — not the AFR — is the one who dug up JOI's head and has been mailing out copies of the Entertainment. Nearly every later ending discussion is written for or against this post.

Key claims

  • Premise from DFW himself (May 1996 Live Online interview — the venue is the WORD e-zine live chat of 17 May 1996, archived at word-ezine-1996-chat; Swartz's quote, his "May 17, 1996" citation line, and the questioner handle "Herb" all match the primary transcript word for word; Swartz restyles only the chat's inner double-quoted "end" as 'end'): "There is an ending as far as I'm concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an 'end' can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame."
  • Hal's core problem: since eating the mold as a child he is a brilliant communicator who cannot feel (p. 694: "far more robotic than John Wayne"). Only JOI saw it in life; as a wraith he can read Hal's thoughts and confirm it.
  • JOI made the Entertainment to draw Hal out — Hal moves outwardly but doesn't feel; Entertainment victims feel but don't move. Cites the wraith to Gately (p. 839): "Any conversation or interchange is better than none at all."
  • DMZ (a mold that grows on a mold) was created/kept by JOI to undo the effects of the mold Hal ate. The DMZ and the Entertainment were delivered together to the FLQ among JOI's personal effects (pp. 670, 483n205) — they were meant to go together, for Hal.
  • The wraith is behind the ETA "hauntings" (tripods, Stice's bed, ceiling tiles — he's searching for Pemulis's DMZ). With Pemulis distracted by expulsion, the wraith puts DMZ on Hal's never-unattended toothbrush (pp. 860, 870); symptoms begin immediately (p. 862, Stice thinks Hal is crying).
  • DMZ inverts Hal's condition: he begins to feel but cannot communicate (people see hysterical laughter or terrible sadness). Before, everyone could hear Hal except JOI; after, only JOI can hear him.
  • Hal is hospitalized before the AFR assault on ETA (p. 16: "the only other emergency room I have ever been in [was] almost exactly one year back"), ends up in the bed next to Gately; Joelle recognizes him and connects the two plots; they go dig up JOI's grave with John Wayne standing watch — confirmed by Gately's prophetic dream (p. 934) and Hal's Year of Glad memory (pp. 16–17).
  • Wayne is an AFR spy turned double agent; like Marathe his loyalties end up "even-numbered" (n. 40). The AFR finds out and kills him — why he "would have won" the WhataBurger but didn't (p. 16f).
  • The grave-dig is Too Late: Orin got there first. Evidence Orin is the mailer of the Entertainment: padded mailer postmarked suburban Phoenix (p. 36); Orin oddly "in line in the post office" though he hates snail-mail (p. 244, and he doesn't deny Hal's challenge); DuPlessis got his copies from "this relative, an athlete" (p. 723); appearance sites map onto Orin's NFL geography (New Iberia LA / New Orleans, Tempe AZ / Phoenix — credit Carlisle p. 477). Targets are JOI's enemies: Berkeley film critics, the medical attaché who had the affair with Avril.
  • Orin dug up his father (also releasing the wraith — cf. the Papineau-region custom of drilling a soul-hole in the coffin lid, p. 244), then under the AFR's roach-tumbler torture gives them the master; the AFR uses it to topple the Gentle administration and end Subsidized Time (p. 16's "ultra-mach fighter"; n. 114: Year of Glad is "the very last year of Subsidized Time").
  • The ending itself: in Year of Glad Hal can't communicate at all but is no longer a robot ("I'm not a machine. I feel and believe," p. 12). He looks forward to playing Ortho Stice — who is possessed by JOI (in the manuscript Stice is "the Wraithster") — so the novel ends with Hal finally about to interface with his father in the only medium left to him: tennis.
  • Comment thread adds (worth keeping): Jeff Halley's elaboration that the trashed tunnel cartridges + Ennet House staff rummaging ETA trash + the FLQ buying cartridges-and-DMZ as one lot imply JOI's effects carried both items; "Warf" on Lyle as the dead ex-Head Trainer (p. 971 sauna accident); "Bill" objecting that wraiths can't move objects so JOI works through Lyle; Daryl (Infinite Zombies) objecting that Hal is in Arizona and Gately in Massachusetts, so the hospital meet-up requires timeline shifting; Peregrine Beckman on Madame Psychosis = metempsychosis (via Ulysses).

Themes

  • Communication/solipsism (Hal's inversion: expression without feeling vs. feeling without expression); family (father-son interface as the engine of the whole plot); entertainment as weapon and as desperate parental gift; Quebecois separatism (AFR endgame); addiction only obliquely (Gately's recovery frames the grave-dig).

Cross-references

Notable passages

"Gately, having relived his bottom, begins to recover from his infection. But at the same time, Hal's condition deepens." — Swartz, opening moves of the theory

"But Stice is possessed by his father (in the manuscript, Stice is called 'the Wraithster'), so the novel ends as Hal finally gets to really interface with his father — in the only way he has left." — Swartz, final paragraph

"They're digging up his skull — it's a Hamlet reference." — Swartz, in comments

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