Montaigne/Austen Essay

"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." David Foster Wallace wrote this in his 2001 story "Good Old Neon". Wallace is referring to what goes on within the human mind, much like Montaigne does when he discusses his own ideas on the connection and chaos in human behavior. Jane Austen also portrays this interconnectedness through her novel "Pride and Prejudice". 

Montaigne writes extensively on human tendencies and how the brain works. In his essays he generally starts off on one topic and allows that topic to grow, expand, and connect into an array of other topics. He is able to write about the nature of humans, habits, learning, relationships, etc through connected randomness. Montaigne uses stream of consciousness to focus on one topic and then flow smoothly into an entirely different subject, so different that their differences make them connect together. 

Much like Montaigne, Jane Austen portrays interconnectedness in her novel "Pride and Prejudice". The story is told through both the eyes of Elizabeth, who tells of her own thoughts and opinions, and also an outside narrator who speaks solely of action. By doing this Jane Austen is able to make a huge list of completely different characters all connect back to each other, and it also causes the novel to be turned into slight chaos due to the fact that the reader is never entirely sure as to the situation. Each event in the story is based on one prior that's builds in order to help emphasize the blossoming relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy. The interconnectedness portrayed in Pride and Prejudice proves how small the world truly is and that it only seems large from a single viewpoint. 

David Foster Wallace's statement on interconnectedness and human tendencies are very relate able to what is portrayed in Montaigne's and  Austen's own writing. Human interconnection is made possible and noticeable when looked at through a larger lens. When one is able to look at the world through a larger lens it is easier to see what all three authors were trying to portray; that the world is a lot more interconnected than we think, and that we are all more alike than we think ourselves to be.