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/lit/ - Literature

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5768295 No.5768295 [Reply] [Original]

Does anyone know why the theme of always missing the target is so prevalent in this novel?

For instance, there is a full episode where Weisman gathers the crew at Peenemünde, including Pökler, and has them launch a rocket, and they are situated on the X. Of course, it doesn't hit the X.

Then, later, in the episode where they commandeer Gerhardt van Göll, the character Närrisch narrows down where the Russians may have taken Göll, and he narrows it down to sites VII and X (X being perhaps a metaphor for a target), but he's not at X, where the Fraulein was waiting to pick them up (but of course never came).

I'm sure there were other instances in the novel when Pynchon alluded to this phenomenon: always missing the target.

Why though? What point is he trying to make with his symbolic rocket?

>> No.5768300

>>5768295
Your missing the point here, OP.

>> No.5768309

>>5768295
Well, that's tantamount to asking about the meaning of the novel as a whole.

But in general, I would say it is meant to point to incompleteness of human attempts at meaning, action, knowledge, etc in general, especially in modern condition.

>> No.5768319

>>5768295
>Peenemünde
>Pökler
>Göll
>Närrisch

What the fuck is this, a bad thrash metal band convention?

>> No.5768328

>>5768319
Wow did you know there is a language called German?

>> No.5768364

>>5768309
Yeah but I think it may go a bit deeper than that. For instance, if the rocket, whose propulsion system Pökler helped develop, actually hit the X, then Pökler would have died.

I think you are correct, sir, in stipulating that human attempts at destruction with rockets is incomplete (and they definitely demonstrated the incompleteness of knowledge in that episode where Pynchon explained the testing phases of the rocket), however I think that's a given.

Pökler's life was saved BECAUSE the rocket missed. Meaning it was valuable to his life that the rocket wasn't completely perfect. Perhaps Pynchon is trying to say something about the separation of duties (all the different fields in rocket creation), a kind of backlash for isolated information hubs, trying to say that what They want is chaos in the first place and that is their aim, They didn't want the rocket to hit the X. No, if the rocket hit the X, perhaps their job would be over and the workers would not be valuable to Them any longer, liabilities even.

>> No.5768378

Gravity's Rainbow
A hobbit's tale by
Bilbo Baggins