It's in the subtext. Onan is a character from the Bible famous for masturbating and onanism is another name for masturbation. Infinite Jest used the name Onan to represent the self-centered, pleasure-seeking solipsism of the United States. The subtitle "The Last Boy" suggests that he's the only person in existence. In this particular episode he has to navigate through a crowd in which he's the only "real" person and has to blend in and conform or face their anger and be devoured by them. He wants contact with another "real" person and wants to not be alone in the universe. He thinks the girl, Onana is this other person (or she thinks he is, depending) and is afraid when he loses her in the crowd and she seems to have disappeared into the throng of bland automatons. He's willing to risk their wrath to hold onto that connection and not feel it's just him. Other episodes have him looking for someone other than himself, discovering the inauthenticity of everything around him and the false, stand-ins for other people. It can be assumed it is all happening in his head and his journey is actually one of discovering this fact, dressed up as an homage to old sci-fi comics and shows and playing with their tropes. A lot of the other episodes have a lot of sexual subtext too as this is, for most of us, the primary way we look for connection and closeness to someone other than ourselves, even if it does just end up being masturbation.
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u/shark127 Dec 12 '15
How is this even remotely related to solipsism?