This study of Gravity's Rainbow replies to critics who have misread Thomas Pynchon's novel, and defines the novel's focal concept. In Gravity's Rainbow, style, structure, and concept are integrated in the author’s design. The fulfillment of this design results in a comprehensive representation of the apocalyptic temper of western civilization in the modern period—the consciousness that has caused the armageddon of World War II and the threat of nuclear war. A meaningful term for this apocalypse is “parousia”, an end to history taking the form of a general surrender to deathliness. A beneficial way of defining “parousia” is through a certain ideological social stratification. Characters in the novel can be categorized as the Elect, the Preterite, or the Redeemer. Ethical struggles between these classes result in an on-going historical process toward an apocalypse.This paper organizes Pynchon’s apocalyptic concept into a centrifugal axis where meaning is organically interrelated and then spirals outward toward varied novelistic developments which offer other perspectives on the same basic concepts. The thesis explicates approximately thirty episodes which substantiate the “parousia” concept as it appears in the author’s style, structure, and thematic ideology.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/181875 |
| Date | January 1978 |
| Creators | Selke, David N. |
| Contributors | Koontz, Thomas W. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | 331 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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