Incarnations of Burned Children

Incarnations of Burned Children, by David Foster Wallace, was a very frightening story. I felt on edge from the first sentence all the way to the end. Wallace did not shy away from harsh detail or anguish on the characters’ part, and this helped bring the situation to life. I didn’t feel like I was reading a story, but rather, experiencing the situation myself as a bystander. My first thought after finishing the story was there was a message about parenting and relationships between fathers, mothers and children. To me the screaming child and the frantic parents can parallel many family crises. The Mother and Father obviously love their child, but failure to communicate put him in extreme jeopardy. Both parents became overcome by their fears, and they unintentionally resorted to a sort of tunnel vision. They tried to comfort him and cleaned his wounds the best they could, but he still screamed. They assumed that he was upset like them, so they didn’t take the time to listen. On a much less hectic scale situations like that occur between troubled families everyday. Whether parents are too strict or kids are acting out there is usually some issue that parents and children can never see eye to eye on. If they put more effort into listening to each other, though, they might relate to each other and come to solutions a whole lot quicker.