What happened in the last paragraph of "Oblivion?"

March 26, 2006 7:59 AM

Long shot: can someone help me understand the ending to David Foster Wallace's short story "Oblivion" from his book of the same name?

It's the one about sleep and snoring. I know that many of his stories just END, but this one seems to have a "twist" or resolution that I'm just not grasping fully.

posted by juniper to writing & language (5 comments total)

It's confusing, definitely, but the implication seems to be that the entire story was a dream, and the dream of the wife's.

(The second speaker, the one who wasn't dreaming but was trying to wake her up, is the husband we thought we reading the perspective of.)

With that sort of reveal it's impossible to know if any of what we read was "really true" within the world of Hope and her husband.

Wyatt Mason's review lends support to this interpretation.
posted by BackwardsCity at 8:08 AM on March 26, 2006

(The second speaker, the one who wasn't dreaming but was trying to wake her up, is the husband we thought we *were* reading the perspective of.)
posted by BackwardsCity at 8:09 AM on March 26, 2006

The Wallace discussion list has tackled this one at length. The search engine for the list archives is clunky, but if you can find them, there have been some great in-depth discussions of this story and its ending.
posted by statolith at 8:30 AM on March 26, 2006

Thanks! I'll read both links. This story has been nagging at me for at least a month now.
posted by juniper at 10:32 AM on March 26, 2006

check this out
posted by kensanway at 1:04 PM on March 26, 2006