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Corporeal narrative of insatiable desire in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

Abstract Considering addiction to be the central concern of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), this article sees the human body as both a storytelling agent and a described object. It explores insatiable desire as essence of addiction, focusing on the interaction between characters’ bodies and their desires. This article seeks to further examine corporeal narrative techniques in the novel with a particular focus on the relationship between narrative bodies and time or space, the differential embodiments of bodies, and the text’s manipulation of the reader’s body. Adopting varied corporeal narrative techniques, Wallace warns readers against indulging one’s desire for addictive satisfaction – especially with regard to passive entertainment – and indicates the vulnerability of the human mind and body to desire. In this way, the reader not only observes the characters’ external actions and internal feelings under insatiable desire from a third-person perspective, but they also have the chance to feel similar desires within themselves.