Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

Suggestions from Wade and Megan about his lifestyle fall on the main character’s deaf ears.

After this, when the main character tries to reason with the Coma Baby about improving his situation, the Coma Baby plays a deaf-and -dumb routine(line14), highly symbolic of the main character’s actions toward those that have been trying to help him.įor example, the main character continues to avoid Clara Tillinghast, his boss, in her attempts to bring him to work on time. The drugs have completely stolen his motivation towards life. For example, he continually shows up late to work, and then after completely botching a project is fired from his job.

This parallels with the main character, who, provided he has his cocaine, does little to improve his situation. With the condition that the Baby gets what he needs, he has no motivation to improve his situation. Everything I need is pumped in.”(line 11) This remark illustrates the main character’s attitude toward life. As the main character approaches he asks the Baby if he’s going to come out. The Coma Baby is shown to be the symbolic representation of the main character through his actions and philosophy toward life, a philosophy wholly irresponsible and unmotivated. The author uses the interaction of the main character and the Coma Baby as proof that the main character will not realize the fallacies of his ways until he has hit rock-bottom. This passage, through the words and phrases employed by McInerney as both dialogue and narration, is strong support for the concept that like the Coma Baby, the main character wants to avoid facing the harsh realities of life and continue living isolated in his world of narcotic-induced pleasure. In this passage, the main character is experiencing a dream where he interacts with the Coma Baby in his workplace. The debate is whether the Coma Baby will see the “light of the delivery room”. The Coma Baby has been residing in its mother’s womb after the mother suffered a car accident and entered a coma. Throughout the novel, McInerney employs the use of the Coma Baby, a current story in the New York Post, a local tabloid, as a symbolic representation of the main character.

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney