Infinite Jest Lesson Plan

Discuss Tiny Ewell's dream, bed-wetting, and subsequent hairlessness upon waking as a metaphor for rebirth.

Tiny's story about taking advantage of his neighbors and manipulating the poorer Irish boys with whom he attended public grade school lingers heavily in his conscience because it is, to his mind, the first evidence of some core darkness that he carries, "the disease" of alcoholism and addiction in general. Ewell concludes the story proclaiming, "I had stolen from neighbors, slum-children, and family, and bought myself sweets and toys. Under any tenable definition of bad, I was bad. ... The whole shameful interval of the Money-Stealers’ Club was moved to mental...