The Anti-Empathic Aftermath of Linguistic Disillusionment in David Foster Wallace’s “The Depressed Person"

• Sergio López-Sande ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

     Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

     Santiago de Compostela, España

     
• Localización: Thresholds and Ways Forward in English Studies / coord. por María Lourdes López Ropero, Sara Prieto García-Cañedo, José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo, 2020, ISBN 978-84-1302-079-2, págs. 129-138
• Idioma: español
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • David Foster Wallace’s “The Depressed Person” (1998) offers a carefully weaved reflection on mental illness. As it does so, it also succeeds in interrogating the difficulties that depressed subjects encounter when they attempt to care about, listen to, or feel for others.

    The impairment of interpersonal understanding and the much questioned possibility that one may truly convey the self in language are both central concerns of Wallace’s work, and their appearance in the story serves, I will contend, not only to speak of human character in the face of mental disorder, as it does on a superficial level, but also to reflect on the very nature of fiction and the insurmountable d