Gravity's Rainbow

[Anonymous No.11519999]

I just finished this novel, looking to discuss themes and try to piece together the "narrative".
I get that Slothrop symbolizes the fetishization of death, but what happens to him in the end? I don't quite get what Pynchon means by his "persona falling apart".
I also get the feeling that the Zone is some kind of purgatory, in between death and rebirth. This is hinted at in the end, when the act of Gottfried being put in the rocket is compared to a womb , and also with the general, dreamlike, absurd happenings in the third part of the book. What do you guys think about this?
What about the incident with Katje and the octopus? Why did They set that up? Was it to place Katje and Slothrop together? Why would that be necessary?
Finally, what do you guys think about Them? What is everyone so paranoid about? Some kind of undercover government in the Zone? Some kind of cosmic puppet master? Pynchon himself??
Thank you in advance for your contributions

[Anonymous No.11520071]

>>11519999
Also (since I rolled quads I get to self-bump in epilogue), in which ways would you say this book is (or isn't) the definitive postmodern novel?

Sometimes, I think a postmodernist is just a modernist with a lot to say. Pynchon doesn't focus on characterization or clear narrative framework in a traditional modernist fashion, but perhaps that's because a lot of his characters aren't fully human- they feel like cartoon characters from the Tom & Jerry era. Perhaps this novel is best described as a modernist portrait of a postmodern landscape.

[Anonymous No.11520097]

I thought it was about futurism

[Anonymous No.11520122]

hue

[Anonymous No.11520123]

>>11520097
Yeah, i think that's definitely a theme too. You reminded me of that passage where he talks about WWII being a conduit for "war between technologies", i.e., plastics v. explosives v. circuits etc.

It's almost as if the technologies themselves are a kind of parasite, keeping humans alive just as a host organism to facilitate replication and growth.

[Anonymous No.11520126]

>>11520123
TED

[Anonymous No.11520232]

>>11520071

Think of postmodernism as degeneracy. Think of it as "we deconstruct any means of tradition".

[Anonymous No.11520239]

>>11520232
and then there's this guy

[Anonymous No.11520874]

>>11519999
>I get that Slothrop symbolizes the fetishization of death,


no. that would be Blicero.

[Anonymous No.11521224]

>>11519999
I've got plenty of thoughts on this book. I can't be assed to type them up right now, maybe later when I'm less tired. But to the main point of this post: look at the one star reviews of this book on Amazon, it's pretty funny.

[Anonymous No.11521542]

>>11520874
Why would you say that? On p. 753 it says "... to help him deny what he could not possibly admit: that he might be in love, in sexual love, with his, and his race's, death." referring to Slothrop. Perhaps Slothrop is the "counterforce" resisting man's naturalistic urges towards sex and violence, ultimately failing in the end with his "disintegration"

[Anonymous No.11521592]

>>11521542
nah that was just ego death

[Anonymous No.11521695]

>>11521542
I wouldn't say that Wuxtry-Wuxtry is a reliable source, but that's an interesting interpretation.
Traditional interpretation of Slothrop is that he is a representation of the rocket (Rocketman), the rainbow and masculinity, aka. the great rainbow cock in the sky. He also acts as a force for thermodynamic entropy (Second Law of THermodynamics… and Tyrone is an anagaram of entropy with the p missing). I take this to mean that Slothrop is being used, like the rocket, by the Elect and Them for order and control.
As for his personality splitting apart, someone (I forgot who) interpreted this as the Heisenberg theorem (you can know the speed of an electron and not it's position and vice versa) as more information is known about Slothrop and his erections the information about his position becomes uncertain. Mendelson interprets this as the fate of literary modernism. Also think of white light dispersing into a rainbow, think of Slothrop's 8 avatars/identities (according to Weisenberger - I can think of only seven and that would correspond to nicely to the colours of the rainbow). Finally, Weisenberger calls the last avatar of Slothrop before he is scattered "The Fool", which is a void/null card in the Tarot deck. Perhaps compare Slothrop with the fool in King Lear and how their disappearances are similar?
I think that it would've been to place Katje and Slothrop together, although for reasons other than just information I can't think. There is an interesting fact that Weisenberger points out that Katje makes an "American lieutenant disappear" and the beginning of Slothrop's costume changes happens in this chapter. Couple that with a part that Katje says "I don't think they know.... about other selves... yours or the Rocket's... no. No more than you do. If you can't understand it now, at least remember." Perhaps stretching here, but I would see this as Slothrop's Brennschluss as he know loses control and then becomes a force affected by gravity (aka. his wanderings without purpose in general hope for finding the S-Great) and a rainbow in his splitting of identities. Perhaps Katje was meant to instigate this by Them...
I think that the "They" tends to generally correspond with the Elect especially towards the end of the novel, but perhaps that is too general...

[Anonymous No.11521713]

>>11520232
To deconstruct means to pack a siege engine and move it to somewhere else. It doesn't mean destroy.

[Anonymous No.11521760]

>>11521695
Sorry Heiseinberg uncertainty principle not theorem.

I just finished the novel on Friday so still in that process of mulling it over. One thing that I'd like to know others' opinions on is about Blicero… To me he doesn't seem part of the Elect or the Preterite, and also isn't a villain that people say he is. The novel is notorious I think for setting up binaries like Elect/Preterite, good/evil, Yang/Yin, cause-and-effect/parallel but then things being impossible to classify one way or the other. In the same way, while death is used by Them for their purposes, death can also be used as a good force (eg. Herero suicide) and take away control from the Elect. For me, Blicero is like Wernher von Braun and being used by the Elect for their purposes, but he himself isn't a member of the Elect. He's a bit like a mirror image of Slothrop, as they're the only people to get Tarots, both are being controlled and both are figures associated with the rocket. My question about Blicero is what to make of his homosexuality and the general treatment of homosexuality in the novel. The section at the end of part 3 and the representation of the Dora camp homosexuals suggests some kind of homophobia, although this may be the Uncle Charles effect for the respective characters. While homosexuality is described as deviancy by Andreas (I think) and compared to the other deviant acts such as pedophilia, necrophilia in the explosion of the rocket, Pynchon doesn't exactly seem to have a problem with representing deviant acts elsewhere in the novel. Also, if we were reading the end of part 3 as "gay people should fuck more passionately" then Blicero certainly seems to fulfil this with Gottfried. I'm wondering what other people think... Was Pynchon homophobic in writing this novel or does it in some way embrace homosexuality (and by connotation, death)?

[Anonymous No.11521770]

>>11521760
he's like the main baddie aside from maybe jamf and Nixon

[Anonymous No.11521814]

>>11521695
>Traditional interpretation of Slothrop is that he is a representation of the rocket
I see what you mean, I guess it's like Their plan is a kind of extinction (or transformation, as hinted at in the beginning of the novel) or mass murder of humans by which They have used the war. This would then imply that They are some kind of cosmic entity which is actively fighting entropy.

>As for his personality splitting apart, someone (I forgot who) interpreted this as the Heisenberg theorem
I like that interpretation a lot (I'm kind of a Heisenberg fanboy), because it implies that Slothrop,never had objective, well-defined physical proprieties in the first place. H-burg's grand theory which he elaborates on in his book "Physics and Philosophy" is that objects in their most fundamental nature do not exist in the classical sense of having objective physical properties, but rather, exist as a distribution of probabilities or tendencies towards many different properties at once. This is somewhat analogous to Plato's concept of "potentia". It is also wroth mentioning that the quantum mechanical model for the harmonic oscillator, a common tool for mathematical physicists, is a Gaussian integral- a parabola.

>I would see this as Slothrop's Brennschluss as he know loses control and then becomes a force affected by gravity (aka. his wanderings without purpose in general hope for finding the S-Great) and a rainbow in his splitting of identities
Good point. I can't help but speculate that Slothrop's meeting Katje, identity crisis, and entrance into the Zone represents his death, of the ego or maybe just literal, physical death. This is similar to what I was saying earlier about the Zone being a kind of purgatory, and would explain the dissolution of Slothrop's identity into some kind of mystical void. But was this Their intention? Or did They eventually loose control of Slothrop altogether?

[Anonymous No.11521892]

>>11521760
>One thing that I'd like to know others' opinions on is about Blicero
I think he's definitely preterite, because he clearly has a lot of original sin and spends most of the novel as a conduit for sexual lust as well as the lust for power and control. The seven deadly sins are all prominent throughout the novel (also there's seven colors in a rainbow) but Blicero stands out as particularly sadistic and evil. I think that's what Pynchon was trying to emphasize- that the preterite are those who are destined to fall victim to animalisitc desires and transform into creatures of sin.

In regards to homosexuality, I don't think the book takes any clear perspective except that homosexual lust is no more or less sinful than heterosexual lust. I think the presence of homosexuality in the novel is really just to paint a more accurate and complete picture of human sexuality.

[Anonymous No.11521901]

Slothrop is an allegory for America's loss of innocence after the war. Also possibly Farina, who knows

[Anonymous No.11522088]

>>11520232
>I watch Jordan Peterson videos

[Anonymous No.11522755]

>>11521901
>Farina
literally who

[Anonymous No.11522852]

>>11522755

[Anonymous No.11523186]

>>11522755
Richard Farina, Pynchon's BFF who died young in a motorcycleaccident. Pynchon actually attributed GR to him.

Farina wrote this wacky campus novel which is worth checking out.

[Anonymous No.11523689]

it's when your dick is a rocket but also the rocket is youre dick and you can't tell the different anymore so you slap on a pig costume and fuck an 11 year old girl in a ghost ship sailing through a non-existent dimension in the middle of a warzone (but actually you never existed in the first place either so that makes sense in a certain kind of way) and then after you're through with all that you disintegrate into nothingness but all of the supporting cast in your story somehow still "feel" or perhaps "are influenced by" your spirit/memory/non-existence, up to and including a sentient radically revolutionary light bulb
that's pretty much the gist of postmodernism

[Anonymous No.11524382]

Bump

[Anonymous No.11525060]

>>11519999
Found this on its TVTropes page...

>"What?" ~ [Richard Nixon]

This book summed up in one word perfectly.

[Anonymous No.11525272]

>>11522755
Nigga, he dedicated the book to him. It's in your copy....

[Anonymous No.11525612]

was it pschizophrenia?

[Anonymous No.11525649]

>>11520123
Maybe that explains the woman from V. as well:a deconstructable body torn apart by children

[Anonymous No.11527182]

>>11525649
I haven't read V. yet but I really enjoyed GR and Inherent Vice. Is it worth the read?

[Anonymous No.11527495]

>>11527182
no

[Anonymous No.11527540]

>>11527182
It’s an exceptionally good first novel

[Anonymous No.11527768]

>>11527182
you tell me

[Anonymous No.11528377]

>>11523689
Why do you say that the Zone (and Slothrop) are nonexistent? Is this similar to what OP was saying about the Zone being a kind of purgatory?

[Anonymous No.11528412]

>>11528377
Yeah, I think Zone and Slothrop (to a certain point) exist, and I don't think the Anubis is a ghost ship either...? But the Zone does act as a place full of uncertainty due to the lack of frontiers and its comparison to Land of Oz.

[Anonymous No.11528947]

Be sure to check out this podcast .
>http://shoutengine.com/DeathIsJustAroundtheCorner/

The episodes on Pynchon are well researched and Michael S.Judge clearly knows what he is talking about .
I cant recomend it enough .

[Anonymous No.11529419]

>>11528412
>its comparison to Land of Oz
When was this? Sounds interesting but I think I missed this in the text

[Anonymous No.11529598]

>>11529419
he read the epigraphs like a plen

[Anonymous No.11530707]

>>11528947
Thank you for this

[Anonymous No.11530742]

there's literally too much shit going on in this book's it's insane to think one person wrote it

[Anonymous No.11531906]

What do you guys think about the references to 60's counterculture? German decadence, in the book, is somewhat analogous to the death of 60's counterculture, and there are countless references to LSD.

[Anonymous No.11532041]

>>11530742
that's why it took him 38 years to write it

[Anonymous No.11532662]

>>11531906
It's actually about Vietnam as well!

[Anonymous No.11533565]

>>11532662
How so? In what way was Vietnam a war between technologies?

[Anonymous No.11533701]

>>11533565
A madman named Joseph Slade claimed that the entire novel was narrated by a drugged-up Vietnam soldier, using page 739 (in 760 page edition) as evidence. But yeah, basically look at page 739 and the Richard M. Zhlubb passage.

[Anonymous No.11535143]

>>11521224
I did enjoy the section told from the perspective of an immortal lightbulb. But was sad when the lightbulb did not engage in carnal intercourse with any of the poorly defined characters.

I find amusing that someone who hated the book made it that far into it.