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Modern Myth and Ideology in David Foster Wallace's the Pale King BearWorks MSU Graduate Theses Spring 2016 Modern Myth And Ideology In David Foster Wallace's The Pale King Matthew Ryan Stewart As with any intellectual project, the content and views expressed in this thesis may be considered objectionable by some readers. However, this student-scholar’s work has been judged to have academic value by the student’s thesis committee members trained in the discipline. The content and views expressed in this thesis are those of the student-scholar and are not endorsed by Missouri State University, its Graduate College, or its employees. Follow this and additional works at: https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Stewart, Matthew Ryan, "Modern Myth And Ideology In David Foster Wallace's The Pale King" (2016). MSU Graduate Theses. 2543. https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/2543 This article or document was made available through BearWorks, the institutional repository of Missouri State University. The work contained in it may be protected by copyright and require permission of the copyright holder for reuse or redistribution. For more information, please contact BearWorks@library.missouristate.edu. MODERN MYTH AND IDEOLOGY IN DAVID FOSTER WALLACE’S THE PALE KING A Masters Thesis Presented to The Graduate College of Missouri State University TEMPLATE In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts, English By Matthew Ryan Stewart July 2016 Copyright 2016 by Matthew Ryan Stewart ii MODERN MYTH AND IDEOLOGY IN DAVID FOSTER WALLACE’S THE PALE KING English Missouri State University, July 2016 Master of Arts Matthew Ryan Stewart ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to analyze David Foster Wallace’s novel The Pale King through the critical lenses of Lubomir Doležel’s Heterocosmica and Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” to arrive at a theory of the heroic in the novel. The Pale King features multiple characters experiencing various crises in the face of an invisible, adversarial force that can be understood through Doležel’s modern myth formulation, in which an invisible domain oppresses characters. This study analyzes three themes of the novel in which this interaction is most observable: the religious, the supernatural, and the civic themes. Althusser’s work is applied to argue that the invisible domain functions through an ideological mechanism. The thesis’s last chapter arrives at a twofold theory of the heroic that both helps illuminate The Pale King’s central characters and augments Doležel’s theory. The heroic characters of the novel follow one of two models: the mystical model – embodied by Shane Drinion – comprises being able to find meaning in meaningless work, rather like Sisyphus; the civic model – embodied by DeWitt Glendenning – entails adhering to the outmoded but noble convictions of civic responsibility despite inevitable downfall in the face of the invisible domain. KEYWORDS: The Pale King, Heterocosmica, modern myth, ideology, heroism, civic responsibility. This abstract is approved as to form and content _______________________________ Matthew Calihman, PhD Chairperson, Advisory Committee Missouri State University iii MODERN MYTH AND IDEOLOGY IN DAVID FOSTER WALLACE’S THE PALE KING By Matthew Ryan Stewart A Masters Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College Of Missouri State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts, English July 2016 Approved: _______________________________________ Matthew Calihman, PhD, Associate Professor _______________________________________ Kenneth Gillam, PhD, Associate Professor _______________________________________ Lanya Lamouria, PhD, Associate Professor _______________________________________ Julie Masterson, PhD: Dean, Graduate College iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A truly exhaustive list of people to whom I will always be grateful at Missouri State University could not fit here, but I do owe very much to the support, generosity, guidance, and wisdom of Matt Calihman throughout the development of this thesis as well as throughout my undergraduate and graduate experience at MSU. For their thoughtful care in the development of this thesis I am also deeply indebted to Lanya Lamouria and Ken Gillam. Finally, I owe my emotional and psychological well-being to the support system created by the English Department GAs, 2014-2016. Thanks, all. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Doležel’s Mythology .....................................................................................5 I. An Introduction to Possible Worlds Formulae .....................................................5 II. Multi-Person Worlds .........................................................................................10 III. The Modern Myth ............................................................................................13 Chapter Two: The Pale King and Religion .......................................................................19 I. “Good People” ....................................................................................................20 II. Chris Fogle’s Coming-to-the-Light Moment ....................................................24 III. The Exorcist and the Stygian Wiggle Rooms ..................................................27 Chapter Three: The Supernatural Aspects of The Pale King .............................................33 I. Claude Sylvanshine and Random-Fact Intuition ................................................34 II. Shane Drinion’s Levitation ...............................................................................38 III. Ghosts/Apparitions ..........................................................................................41 Chapter Four: The Civic Aspect of The Pale King ............................................................44 I. The Elevator Discussion .....................................................................................45 II. The Ideological Mechanics of the Invisible Domain ........................................55 Chapter Five: Heroism in the Modern Myth......................................................................62 I. The Mystic Model of Heroism ...........................................................................64 II. The Civic Model of Heroism ............................................................................68 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................72 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................74 vi INTRODUCTION Even if he had given up writing after the publication of 1996’s Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s place in the circle of Great American Writers would have been more or less granted. Some of the acclaim garnered for that behemoth novel – e.g. “it's as though Paul Bunyan had joined the NFL or Wittgenstein had gone on `Jeopardy!'” (Caro) - would be enough to settle the matter: the novel was a post-postmodern game-changer, the work of a deeply talented writer. It was also the work of a writer deeply interested – morally interested – in the state of America at the turn of the millennium. The impetus behind the writing of the novel was Wallace’s desire to “do something real American,” and, specifically, to capture the “stomach level sadness” that “doesn’t have much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of that stuff that gets talked about on the news” (Miller). I probably do not have to remake the case of Wallace’s moralism here (though it will get explored later in the essay): rather, suffice it to say, Wallace was keenly aware that there was some nebulous lack in American life at the cusp of the twenty-first century. In the years after Infinite Jest, Wallace seemed to have zeroed in more specifically on what the “stomach-level sadness” comprised. In his later short fiction and, famously, his Kenyon College Commencement Speech address, Wallace perceived a problem with attention and awareness endemic in U.S. culture. Ultimately, it is his final work of fiction, the unfinished, posthumously-published The Pale King, that Wallace presented his most forceful thesis on the issue of American sadness. The Pale King, assembled from hundreds of pages of manuscript that Wallace left after his suicide in 2008, presents 1 perhaps a new novelistic form that understands the forces at work in U.S. society in a “modern mythological” format. The novel explores the forces at play in late capitalist America that disable feelings of satisfaction and legitimacy in its populace: these forces have perverted, in a sense, political, religious, and familial values at some juncture in the second half of the twentieth century. This paper primarily aims to prove two points. The first is that Lubomir Doležel’s modern myth novel theory, as outlined in his Heterocosmica, clearly illustrates the form of The Pale King. The second point is that since Doležel’s myth formulations – which comprise invisible forces that oppress the denizens of the myth world – can be understood as ideological in nature, I will use an Althusserian understanding of ideological functions to further illustrate the oppressive forces in the novel. From these lenses of interpretation I intend to arrive at a model of the
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