Montaigne/Austen
Essay
David
Foster Wallace stated that, “What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and
all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at
most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.” This idea that there is so
much in our human lives that it is almost indescribable can be seen in Montaigne’s
Essays, he used 107 chapters of stream of consciousness in order to try to explain
what he thought was the critical parts of life. On the other side there is Pride
and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, which uses a structured narrative that shows the
connections of characters. While both support Wallace’s statement, they go
about it in different ways.
Michel de Montaigne wrote a series of essay about all
things ranging from smells to cruelty. He wrote about how he perceived life,
but rather than just a short novel about life as a whole he chose a different approach,
to break each part of life into different parts and take a look at each one separately.
To make his work even more different from other it was written through stream
of consciousness, meaning he wrote whatever he thought at that time. Through his
107 chapters you can see into how not only he was as a person but also all of his
person beliefs and ideals. The reason that his work illustrates David Foster Wallace’s
statement is that, even though he separated the each part of life they still connected
with each other and as a whole. With that you still see how each aspect of our
lives and humanity as a whole are interconnected and intertwined. Also the
second part of the statement that talks about how writing can barely scratch the
surface is also shown, he wrote about over 100 topics with thousands of words,
but still there is more. It goes to show that even with all that we have still barely
scratched the surface just as David Foster Wallace said.
Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice also shows how
our whole and life in general is interconnected but rather than using stream of
consciousness, she instead used a structured narrative. She used the story of a
family to show how each person’s life is connected to the next, and how people’s
lives have effects on each other. Her difference from Montaigne is the style at
which they both showed Wallace’s statement. Montaigne used stream of consciousness
with many parts while Austen used a fictional story of a family as they grow. The
crucial part is that they both show the connections between all people and all
parts of life. To show even more about how everything can be interconnected elements
of Montaigne’s essays can be seen in Pride and Prejudice.
David Foster Wallace explained how most things are
connected, this idea can be seen in both Montaigne’s Essays and Pride and Prejudice.
There is a distinct distinction between the styles of the two pieces, Montaigne
used stream of consciousness in order to dissect each part of life and explain
his thought on each part, Austen wrote a story that used common themes with
fictional characters to show how people are interconnected. While the two
authors went about it different ways they still showed how the statement holds
true.
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