Response to David Foster Wallace's "Incarnations of Burned Children"

David Foster Wallace’s “Incarnations of Burned Children” is one of those stories that just stick with you. I’ve read it before and was reluctant to read it a second time because I knew what was going to happen. But I went ahead and forced myself to read it, and realized, that more than anything, it wasn’t necessarily the story that stuck with me, but the language Wallace uses. His construction of sentences is hauntingly beautiful in that each word, each turn of phrase is there for the singular purpose of creating the greater effect of fear and sorrow.

            For example, one of my favorite lines from this short story describes how the father deals with the situation at hand: “ . . . the Daddy moving quickly and well and his man’s mind empty of everything but purpose, not yet aware of how smoothly he moved or that he’d ceased to hear the high screams because to hear them would freeze him and make impossible what had to be done to help his child, whose screams were regular as breath . . .” (Wallace 706). The most striking thing about this description is its length. It is all one very long sentence, which creates a sense of breathlessness and urgency, thus mimicking the emotional state of the characters, specifically the dad. Additionally, the long sentences help to portray the sense that the father is doing things automatically, without thinking. At this point in the story, he moves like a robot, without feeling or emotion, simply doing what needs to be done to save the child.

            This sense of emotional detachment as a means of getting through the situation is furthered by the lack of specific names in the story. They are simply the Daddy, the Mommy, and the baby. This lack of names creates a distance between the reader and the emotional gravity of the situation being described. There is no specificity for the reader to latch on to and make an emotional attachment with. However, the audience is still left haunted because, by the same token, the lack of specificity creates a sense of universality – that this situation could happen to anyone.