After our conversation in class about the role of happiness in the novel, I went back to the conversation between LaMont Chu (the boy who wants tennis fame) and Lyle. Lyle’s sagely words to LaMont very clearly explicate the over-arching problem with the pursuit of happiness in the novel. Yet, even Lyle isn’t able to offer any true solution to the problem.
LaMont goes to Lyle explaining that he has a “crippling obsession with tennis fame” and “wants to get to the Show so bad it feels like it’s eating him alive” (388). He is convinced that the famous tennis stars must be intensely happy and must “derive immense meaning” (388) from their fame, and LaMont wants to experience that same happiness.
Lyle immediately explains that the happiness obtained from fame is extremely transitory and, in the tennis stars’ case, lasts only for one’s first photograph in a magazine. After that, all happiness immediately turns into fear: “fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines” (389), fear that the fame will go away. Though LaMont feels trapped in the cage of envy, the actual attainment of fame is no “exit from any cage” (389). Fame doesn’t end in happiness, but in fear of losing what once caused happiness. This, to me, is pretty much the root of most of the characters’ problems in the novel: the fact that you either endlessly pursue happiness, or you attain it fleetingly, until it immediately gets turned into fear of losing that happiness. Everyone is stuck in this cage wherein any choice made in pursuit of happiness is one that will eventually lead to unhappiness.
The cage and the cycle of happiness and fear are exactly what drive every AA member’s drug and alcohol addiction as well. The desire for drugs is a desire to be in a state of utter happiness, but as we’ve heard from Gately and all the other AA members, the happiness and enjoyment that comes from the drugs is temporary. Once the happiness wears off, all that is left is the addiction and the fear that you won’t be able to get more tomorrow.
So now what? LaMont asks this of Lyle and I’m left wondering the same thing. Lyle offers two suggestions: one is that “the truth will set you free” and the second is that “escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage (389). Through AA, the addicts seem to be able to break out of the cage of drug/alcohol addiction using truth and an awareness of their problem. But, as we decided in class, their addictions just get transferred to another object, though one less dangerous. So, even Lyle’s suggestions don’t truly allow for a break out of the cage.
So what can we do to truly break out? Or is anyone really able to? From what we’ve read so far of the novel, I’m really inclined to say that Infinite Jest is a testament to the fact that we are, in fact, trapped in the pursuit of happiness and that there is no way out. Most of the characters in the novel are caged, one way or another. It seems as though the only way to get rid of the problem would be to not desire happiness. But our desire and pursuit of happiness appears to be built into the fact of our humanness. Is there any way to begin to not desire/pursue happiness?
4 responses so far ↓
mhaley // 29 March 2009 at 5.53 pm
In order to no longer desire happiness, I think one would have to be totally content. Whatever level of happiness he has achieved, he would have to be just perfectly content with that. Most of the characters in Infinite Jest are, as you said, in the pursuit of happiness that leads them to feel discontent in their lives. But the picture of human life that Wallace is describing isn’t so bleak, I don’t think. After all, he created the character of Mario, who seems to be completely content with his place in life. So I guess if there is a way for people to achieve happiness, we could find it by studying Mario’s role in the novel.
emrad // 29 March 2009 at 7.38 pm
I agree- Mario’s physically deformed and has no vanity or attachment to his appearance. He’s definitely our anti-hero, especially when he talks about how people never accept truth without the wink and nudge of irony (I forget where exactly this is in the text, sorry…).
I do think that acceptance is the way out- there are definite Buddhist and Taoist undercurrents running through the novel. I think acknowledging and accepting the spiritual void/darkness within is to acknowledge the monistic nature of the universe. Striving for happiness is symptomatic of the more Western, dualist outlook, where there’s always something Other that’s better.
emrad // 29 March 2009 at 7.41 pm
Also, I think it’s significant that Mario gets constant, unconditional love and support from Avril, but while Hal feels the constant need to please her, always such that he’s always pursuing her approval, Mario just accepts it. What does it mean though, that the only person 100% content with themselves and their existence, is also deformed and physically incapable of feeling the same pain others do? What does it mean that the only happy person is condescended to all the time?
jl // 29 March 2009 at 11.35 pm
Maybe it’s somewhat misleading to frame our lives as being fundamentally concerned with “the pursuit of happiness”. The Greeks, Aristotle in particular, had the concept of “eudaimonia” which though often translated as happiness means something like “a flourishing human life”. This was what Aristotle claimed objectively composed “the good life.” The difference is that happiness is psychological (if you ask someone in the midst of doing some ostensibly desirable activity “Are you happy?” they might have to pause and introspect before answering) while eudaimonia is not. For Aristotle, eudaimonia consists in the activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue, and happiness is not virtue but virtuous activity–living well consists in doing something, not just being in a certain state or condition. Subordinate goals such as fame are sought only because they promote well-being, not because they are what well-being consists in. This is abit muddled and I need to think about it abit more, but my vague recollection of Aristotelian ethics seemed pertinent to suggesting an alternative framework of seeing things other then the caged loop of seeking happiness and subsequently fearing the loss of it.