Response to "Incarnations of Burned Children"

I've read this story for a few other classes and am still blown away by its strength.  The story is about these parents trying to give first aid and console their child.  The story is filled with urgency from the very beginning.  I think David Foster Wallace does a great job in the content of describing the urgency.  Also, I think the way the story is actually written attests to the urgency within the story.  For example, the whole story is literally one big paragraph.  The sentences within this paragraph are very long and full of action.  They describe the thoughts that race through the mind of the father and assist his urgency in fixing the problem.  

The pont of view is interesting.  I feel like this story would be a good story if it were told from the point of view of the father or mother, but it would not accomplish the same things that this version does.  The third person perspective is able to view the scene as a whole and separate the reader from it at random moments.  For instance, during the chaos the narrator breaks from the scene for a sentence to describe "a bird in the oak across the driving" watching the door hanging by a hinge. 

The outcome of the child's fate is a little unclear.  I interpreted it as the child losing his childhood.  He doesn't die, because his "body expanded and walked about and drew pay and lived its life untenanted..." I do think however, that the innocence was taken from the child.

The shortest sentence in the story is a strong summary of what this is about: "If you've never wept and want to, have a child."  The fact that as you raise a child he or she will experience pain in some way is a crushing realization.