The paper is supposed to be based on a review by David Foster Wallace which is called Authority and American Usage,
I was told it's about either a Dictionary review or the comparison of two,
I'm doing an Assignment for English from the book, where his review is reprinted,
and the gist of it is this-

Think of the speaker as a character, as an invention of David Foster Wallace, the writer (who could, at least hypothetically, have written about dictionaries in a different voice and in a different form). And mark moments when the character seems most distinctively present or alive. This character is a figure who reads in the field, who thinks about these issues, and who speaks with authority.
Why would Wallace present himself in just these ways? What was at stake for him?
Write an essay in which you discuss the figure of the intellectual presented in the essay. You'll need to work closely with a few key and representative moments in the text. And write an essay in which you assess the figure in relation to your own education -- better yet, in relation to the figure you intend to cut as a well-schooled adult, as an iltellectual, as a person with ideas and knowledge and something to say.

Would the entire article not be the the character?
I'm not able to retain anything I'm reading, I don't know if it's because I'm trying to figure out what, or really who, I'm looking for within the review.