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The Predicament of Encagement
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Plank, Karl A. |
| Copyright Year | 2021 |
| Description | This chapter follows a lead offered by Richard Rorty in his discussion of the Kasbeam barber in Lolita: readers must be curious and pay attention, perhaps especially to minor characters, because at any point one of them may reveal that he or she is suffering. It is cruel to have one's mind elsewhere when such a word is spoken. “The Predicament of Encagement” begins with an analysis of one of Wallace's most minor characters, an old nurse who suffers from dementia and, from the window of her room in the Enfield Compound, screams “Help.” She appears only five times in the huge novel and with only this line or its variation. If readers are to respond to her, as Rorty argues is ethically obliged, then they must first be able to pay attention to her amid the teeming cast of characters and then understand the situation that demands relief. She is an encaged character, engulfed within her assigned place in the novel, even as she is confined to her room and window, within the hollows of her mind, and to her single line. Seeing her as an emblem of the predicament Wallace wants to address, the chapter analyzes various permutations of the encaged self: the solipsistic entrapment of the mind, as seen particularly in Hal Incandenza's novel-opening interview at the University of Arizona; the body as cage and encaged, taking note of the pervasive bodily disfigurements of the novel's characters; the ambiguous phenomenon of life in enclosed spaces that become either shelters or incarceral cells; the cage as metaphor for melancholy, clinical depression, and suicide; and the cage of entertainment that offers infinite distraction and lethally immersive experience. Book Name: The Fact of the Cage |
| Related Links | https://content.taylorfrancis.com/books/download?dac=C2020-0-16495-2&isbn=9781003104292&format=googlePreviewPdf |
| Ending Page | 81 |
| Page Count | 42 |
| Starting Page | 40 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781003104292-2 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2021-01-23 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: The Fact of the Cage Cultural Studies Mind Pay Characters Readers Window Minor Room Chapter Predicament Encaged |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
