A random side note: The Incandenza children seem to possess various physical deformities. Mario has an oversized skull, Orin has an enlarged arm/leg and there's a subtle reference to Hal's disability when he places "the good leg" into his sweatpants first while getting dressed. And yet, despite these handicaps, both Hal and Orin excel at sports.
Birth defects? The result of too many steroids in the breakfast cereal?
I assumed that Orin's huge arm & leg are from the specific muscle build-up of years of football training, and that Hal's leg was some sort of nagging tennis injury. I read Mario's maladies as definitely being birth defects, although I could be wrong on all of this...
ReplyDeleteHaving read it before, I've always understood Mario's deformities to be congenital. The deformity theme has a wider application later on.
ReplyDeleteHaving given it further thought, it makes much more sense that Hal's and Orin's conditions are merely sports related. My imagination is running wild trying to piece this narrative together...this story is so crazy that I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it turned out the Incandenza boys were in fact enlarged, deformed test-tube baby frankensteins created by Himself in their garage laboratory. Or my next favorite theory: robots.
ReplyDeleteROBOTS! ROBOTS! ROBOTS!
ReplyDelete