Michael Pemulis Character Analysis in Infinite Jest

Michael Pemulis is a popular, confident E.T.A. student and friend of Hal. He attends E.T.A. on the James O. Incandenza Geometrical Optics scholarship, and is not as skilled at tennis as Hal and some of his other friends. Pemulis is reigning champion of the game Eschaton and serves as the academy’s resident drug dealer. At the end of the novel he is used as a scapegoat for the widespread drug consumption at E.T.A. and told that he will be expelled, news he takes surprisingly well.

Michael Pemulis Character Timeline in Infinite Jest

The timeline below shows where the character Michael Pemulis appears in Infinite Jest. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...an athlete! Not a freakshow performer!” In the next passage, an E.T.A. student called Michael Pemulis tells a group of little kids about the effects of eating Amanita muscaria, a psychoactive... (full context)

...not be able to pass the urine test, and thus buy clean urine from Michael Pemulis. Pemulis attends E.T.A. on the “coveted” James O. Incandenza Geometrical Optics Scholarship, and is more... (full context)

4 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Michael Pemulis travels through Boston, taking an indirect route in case he is being followed. An extremely... (full context)

Michael Pemulis, Trevor Axford, and Hal Incandenza are in Pemulis’s dorm room with the DMZ tablets Pemulis... (full context)

...drugs on the weekend of 20-21 November. However, in order to have this time off Pemulis will need to make the traveling list for the Tucson-WhataBurger Invitational, which is unlikely, as... (full context)

Reality as Corporate Dystopia Theme Icon

Pemulis has been vomiting from nerves before his match. He needs to win if he’s going... (full context)

...but immediately regrets the outburst, admitting that he hates losing his temper. At this point Pemulis cracks open the door to Hal’s room. Hal and Orin then discuss Quebecers’ resentment of... (full context)

(The same endnote details that Pemulis is now wildly gesturing to Hal, who gestures for Pemulis to throw him a pair... (full context)

(In the final passage of this extended endnote, Orin tries to continue the conversation while Pemulis threatens to break off the antenna of Hal’s phone. Hal insists that what the separatists... (full context)

...highly complex game called Eschaton. No one knows who brought it to the academy, though Pemulis was the one to “make it way more compelling.” In the game, unused tennis balls... (full context)

...precisely calculated. It is Interdependence Day, “an E.T.A. day of mandatory total R&R,” and Hal, Pemulis, and Troeltsch sit together on the pavilion by the East tennis courts, where Eschaton is... (full context)

...unfolding in front of them. It begins to snow for the first time that fall. Pemulis, the reigning Eschaton champion and authority over the game, keeps track of the score with... (full context)

Lord bursts into tears, and Pemulis finally intervenes, yelling at a young student called J.J. Penn. An argument erupts over whether... (full context)

...stunned; it is the first time that a Combatant has hit another Combatant directly. Both Pemulis and Kittenplan immediately begin angrily denouncing Ingersoll, while Lord dons the “Utter Global Crisis” beanie,... (full context)

...calmly while Lord calls for order, but both are ignored. Ingersoll is severely injured while Pemulis backs away with his hands in the air. The game descends into total chaos while... (full context)

...there too, along with an E.T.A. nurse and a urologist wearing an O.N.A.N.T.A blazer. Hal, Pemulis, and Axford all come in together, and Charles asks the urologist to please close the... (full context)

Late P.M., Monday 9 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Pemulis and Stice are in Dr. Rusk’s office, and Stice is being told that he suffers... (full context)

...Lyle; apparently some of the other boys are watching him “like it’s entertainment.” Troeltsch and Pemulis are there too. The boys discuss other E.T.A. students, then nuclear fusion. They then discuss... (full context)

...seems so miserable. Although it’s plausibly related to the meeting with Charles and the urologist, Pemulis was in that meeting too and is his normal, jovial self. (full context)

14 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Michael Pemulis’s brother, a 23-year-old sex worker named Matty Pemulis, is eating soup in a restaurant in... (full context)

...that Mario put the camera aside so they can discuss the mysterious meeting Hal and Pemulis had in Charles’s office, which Hal left totally white-faced. LaMont wants Mario to find out... (full context)

...man from O.N.A.N.T.A. didn’t actually take urine samples from him and the other boys, because Pemulis persuaded him to conduct the test in a month’s time. Mario suggests that they call... (full context)

...Hal confesses to his secret marijuana use in the pump room. He tells Mario about Pemulis’s urine-selling business, and says that no one suspects he or Axford having been taking Substances.... (full context)

...17 November. Possalthwaite is having a breakdown over being unable to trust his family and Pemulis assures him that everything will be okay.) Back in the main narrative, Molly Notkin is... (full context)

(An endnote describes Pemulis, deLint, Nwangi, and Watson sitting in deLint’s office. DeLint asks Pemulis to explain what happened... (full context)

(In the same endnote, Pemulis asks how this will affect his chances of attending WhataBurger, and adds that he has... (full context)

Hal falls asleep in the V.R., and when he wakes up, Pemulis is there, saying they really need to talk. Pemulis asks why there is a strip... (full context)