Gravity’s Rainbow: Grin and Bear it
by kenny.wong ~ October 13th, 2010. Filed under: Uncategorized.First off, I don’t want to make it sound like this is an easy text to read. It isn’t.
That being said, I’ve read other “stream of consciousness” prose, Faulkner comes to mind (As I Lay Dying), and a tip I have, other than being frustrated, is this:
Sit back and enjoy. Don’t read too much into what is going on where and by whom. There is robust imagery and subtext being told within the lines. If you gloss over what the hell is going on, you’re going to miss out on what is being said. Try and find themes or images being repeated, subtext over context.
Also, on a very different approach, look at the text in a humanistic way. Since a part (or majority) of the text revolves around stream of consciousness, imagine that the narrator, whoever it might be at the time, is thinking out loud. Now try to imagine yourself thinking (not out loud, just thinking). Do you actively filter what you’re thinking about? Or does your mind just race off into different ideas, thoughts, images, words, etc.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but at times, if I’m really being active about regarding what I think about at times, I am completely, off the wall, insane. Synesthesia comes to mind. Well, a lot comes to mind, but I’m filtering what I’m thinking in this post.
I think that is a part of what Pynchon is trying to do, create that “experience”, take us out of the spectator (objective) viewpoint, and put us directly into the mind, animate or inanimate, of war.
As far as what I got out of As I Lay Dying, I can honestly say it is something far different from the actual story being presented. Perhaps Gravity’s Rainbow is just as vague, and probably not a “Truth” about some ideal, with a capital T. Maybe just truths, a lot of different little truths to be said.
October 13th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
I totally agree, in that the text can be looked at as someone’s stream of consciousness. Like the professor suggested, the book could be considered a representation of an overflow of information.
During times of war, just like in Jarhead, the physical activity going on in the world was triggering many different thoughts in Swafford’s mind. You could say the same thing for the characters in The Things They Carried. For example, Lt Cross was so obsessed with going over every detail of a girl back home in his head, that he was caught daydreaming while Ted Lavender was killed.
I think you are right in that many scenes contain a combination of what is going on in the plot as well as what is going on in the character’s minds. In a way it represents how war causes us to think of minute details we otherwise wouldn’t have really thought of, had we not been in some sort of threatening situation. Such as the extent of Slothrop’s messy unorganized desk. Or the obsession with bananas, and all the different possible ways they can be used. Im sure one could find all sorts of metaphors and meanings for the bananas, but I think they are just to be seen as one of those little meaningless things that suddenly gains meaning in times of war, or in situations of life and death. Kind of like how before you die your life supposedly flashes in front of your eyes and you see little details of your life that you thought you forgot about.
I also agree in that if we were to stop and focus on every single detail we would end up missing out on the story as a whole. If anything, I’ve found that it is easier to take it episode by episode, and read each one the whole way through without stopping. Usually by the end of it i get the main picture of what is going on in that episode, as opposed to if i were to dissect it any further and stop mid-episode. If I still dont get it after the first read, i just read it over again until I do; not extremely extensively to the point where I get a headache, more like a thorough skim.
Also it is good to make marks and points in places that may have deeper meaning, or are confusing the first time.
Also, about Pynchon trying to take the reader out of the objective and kind of throw us in the story, I think this way of writing the reader into the story with the characters could have something to do with the time it was written. Vietnam was the first war that we were able to watch objectively, safe at home through our televisions. Pynchon could be trying to get people to become more actively involved with the story, to stop us from becoming insensitive to the realities of war… Just a thought.