The first section of Gravity's Rainbow begins with an epigraph written by Wernher Von Braun (a German rocket scientist during the first half of the twentieth century) which reads: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death," (Pynchon, 2006, pg. 1). And with such a quote, we enter the complex, and transgressive World War II landscape that is Gravity's Rainbow. At first glance, it is hard to discern what is reality and what is a dreamlike or fantastic state, and yet as you push further into the text certain questions, concepts, and metaphors begin to plague you, the reader, and become almost so difficult and absolute that they are almost at first impermeable. At yet as you push further and further into the text, you are finally plagued by some kind of question. For me there has been one question that has taken over my reading of this text so far: What does it mean to go 'beyond the zero'? And yet to ask this question we must admit that we must first ask ourselves another question: What is the zero?
In all honesty, when I ask myself "What is the zero?" no matter how much I look, stare, and study the text itself, I do not know what exactly the zero is, and yet as much as I look, stare, and study the text itself, slowly I become more and more certain that the zero is many things. Literally, the "zero" of this text has its roots in mathematics. And while a the physical uttering of the word "zero" might immediately summon up memories of elementary mathematics, the numerical concept of 0, or even the definition of an additive integer; to a seasoned reader and student of literature on might jump to the metaphorical connotations of "zero" and skip the background scientific and mathematical history of "zero" all together. This I am convinced would be a mistake, and was my own error of reading the text until I re-examined page 142 where the character Roger Mexico is analyzing an power series logarithm. Analysis and research of this logarithm eventually led me to the discovery what is literally happening to Tyrone Slothrop in our text: a reversal of stimuli through the implementation of psycho physics. Psycho physics is a science that uses the logarithms described in the text, and is a practice of discerning an individuals threshold "zero" through an analysis of the sensations created by various stimuli. In order to find this threshold, the subject is subjected to stimuli at such a low level that they can't discern the stimuli at all and therefore there is no sensation or reaction. This stimuli is slowly increased in its intensity and then reversed so that the individual's threshold and "zero" is detected. In the most literal and scientific sense of this text, this is what we can first call our "zero", the threshold level of stimuli's effect to cause a result; and yet when we read this text we being to get a sense that the "zero" must be something bigger than just this scientific concept. And that this "zero" must be a metaphor for something else within the context of the novel and the landscape of World War II. But what does the "zero" stand for as a metaphor? Is the "zero" a point between transformation? Is it a space between life and death? Is it the point where dreams meet reality? Is it the point of reversal? Is it a place of judgement? Is the "zero" anything at all or some illusion of a barrier between two things that are one and the same? These are all questions and metaphors that can arise by reading this text.
In my reading of this text and analysis of "zero" as a metaphor I have come to believe the latter of all the various metaphors the "zero" could be, and that the "zero" is an illusion, a barrier between two things that are the same, or part of the same thing. On page 31 there is a description of control which reads: "But you had taken on a greater, and more harmful, illusion. The illusion of control. That A could do B. But that was false. Completely. No one can do. Things only happen, A and B are unreal, are names for parts that ought to be inseparable. . . ." (Pynchon, 2006, 31). The idea of the "zero" belonging somewhere on a spectrum makes sense, both scientifically for the concept of psycho physics, as there are still sounds and stimuli that we can't discern but are there; but ultimately are all part of the same spectrum. But it also makes sense in the metaphorical sense of the text as well. For we we look at the concept of reversal, the psychological landscape of the text, and even perhaps an impending death threatened by the war, which would not be seen as a complete death if we believe as Von Braun does that there is a "spiritual existence after death" (Pynchon, 2006, 1). And yet this leads me back to my original question. If the "zero" is some metaphorical barrier, an illusion on some spectrum, what happens, and what does it mean to go 'beyond the zero'? And yet it becomes unclear to the reader if it is even possible to go 'beyond the zero' at all.
What is clear is that, what is 'beyond the zero' for me at this point of my reading of the text is unknown and remains to be scene, and until then, I will remain reading with this passage in my mind: "There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screaming holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it bring its own light? Will the light come before or after?" (Pynchon, 2006, 5).
In all honesty, when I ask myself "What is the zero?" no matter how much I look, stare, and study the text itself, I do not know what exactly the zero is, and yet as much as I look, stare, and study the text itself, slowly I become more and more certain that the zero is many things. Literally, the "zero" of this text has its roots in mathematics. And while a the physical uttering of the word "zero" might immediately summon up memories of elementary mathematics, the numerical concept of 0, or even the definition of an additive integer; to a seasoned reader and student of literature on might jump to the metaphorical connotations of "zero" and skip the background scientific and mathematical history of "zero" all together. This I am convinced would be a mistake, and was my own error of reading the text until I re-examined page 142 where the character Roger Mexico is analyzing an power series logarithm. Analysis and research of this logarithm eventually led me to the discovery what is literally happening to Tyrone Slothrop in our text: a reversal of stimuli through the implementation of psycho physics. Psycho physics is a science that uses the logarithms described in the text, and is a practice of discerning an individuals threshold "zero" through an analysis of the sensations created by various stimuli. In order to find this threshold, the subject is subjected to stimuli at such a low level that they can't discern the stimuli at all and therefore there is no sensation or reaction. This stimuli is slowly increased in its intensity and then reversed so that the individual's threshold and "zero" is detected. In the most literal and scientific sense of this text, this is what we can first call our "zero", the threshold level of stimuli's effect to cause a result; and yet when we read this text we being to get a sense that the "zero" must be something bigger than just this scientific concept. And that this "zero" must be a metaphor for something else within the context of the novel and the landscape of World War II. But what does the "zero" stand for as a metaphor? Is the "zero" a point between transformation? Is it a space between life and death? Is it the point where dreams meet reality? Is it the point of reversal? Is it a place of judgement? Is the "zero" anything at all or some illusion of a barrier between two things that are one and the same? These are all questions and metaphors that can arise by reading this text.
In my reading of this text and analysis of "zero" as a metaphor I have come to believe the latter of all the various metaphors the "zero" could be, and that the "zero" is an illusion, a barrier between two things that are the same, or part of the same thing. On page 31 there is a description of control which reads: "But you had taken on a greater, and more harmful, illusion. The illusion of control. That A could do B. But that was false. Completely. No one can do. Things only happen, A and B are unreal, are names for parts that ought to be inseparable. . . ." (Pynchon, 2006, 31). The idea of the "zero" belonging somewhere on a spectrum makes sense, both scientifically for the concept of psycho physics, as there are still sounds and stimuli that we can't discern but are there; but ultimately are all part of the same spectrum. But it also makes sense in the metaphorical sense of the text as well. For we we look at the concept of reversal, the psychological landscape of the text, and even perhaps an impending death threatened by the war, which would not be seen as a complete death if we believe as Von Braun does that there is a "spiritual existence after death" (Pynchon, 2006, 1). And yet this leads me back to my original question. If the "zero" is some metaphorical barrier, an illusion on some spectrum, what happens, and what does it mean to go 'beyond the zero'? And yet it becomes unclear to the reader if it is even possible to go 'beyond the zero' at all.
What is clear is that, what is 'beyond the zero' for me at this point of my reading of the text is unknown and remains to be scene, and until then, I will remain reading with this passage in my mind: "There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screaming holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it bring its own light? Will the light come before or after?" (Pynchon, 2006, 5).
"Zeroes and Ones are worked to form some of the sublest binary contrasts in Gravity’s Rainbow. Ombindi’s Empty Ones have embraced the Doctrine of the Zero, racial extinction, and they call themselves "Revolutionaries of the Zero". Blicero has designated his rocket the 00000, and Gottfried is fired due North toward 000 longitude and latitude (see 563 and 707). The V-2 firing that opens Gravity’s Rainbow impacts at Greenwich, 000 longitude, as if to indicate that the war and its weapons have suddenly passed into a new order of terror. Pointsman insists on a Pavlovian world of eithers and ors, but Mexico, the "Antipointsman," believes in "the domain between zero and one—the middle Pointsman has excluded from his persuasion" (55) and They will keep Pointsman confined in his "sterile armamentarium" of Cause and Effect where he can only possess "the zero and the one" and never find Their colossal secrets.
ReplyDeleteNora Dodson-Truck is in love with a psychic medium, Carroll Eventyr ("he was 35 when out of the other world … someone was speaking through Eventyr … some of it was in German" (145) but she herself is an "erotic nihilist" frozen into a hopelessness Pynchon calls "the ideology of the Zero" (149); each time she finds nothing in the "„Outer Radiance," she has "taken a little more of the Zero into herself."
These are uses of Zero as a shorthand for death or for the limitations of rationality, but Pynchon also uses the term to signify an interface between our world and another. The first of the novel’s four sections is called "Beyond the Zero," and it’s epigraph, appropriately enough from V-2 high priest Wernher von Braun, speaks of the fact that "nature does not know extinction," only transformation, and that we survive in some manner" after death." This sort of captioning should alert us to Pynchon’s intention of showing us glimpses of another order of existence beyond the one that our senses and logic apprehend. Jamf had performed a classic Pavlovian experiment on the Infant Tyrone he had rented from Broderick and Nalline Slothrop, but the chemist had evidently not been able to extinguish the reflexive nexus between erection and some "Mystery Stimulus" (see Appendix III: "The Problem of Imipolex G") he had conditioned into the child’s unconscious, for Slothrop’s "rocket-dowsing" penis anticipates rocket hits on London with a precision that confounds statistical probability. Something has survived in Slothrop beyond the rational and visible, then, beyond the limits of sense and logic: Zero is here not a finality, but a portal. Behind the visible world there is an invisible one, an Other Kingdom. Beyond the Zero, past the terminations our "front–brain–faith" assures us are final, another world persists.
The intrusion of this counter–world into ours has always been at the core of Pynchon’s fiction."
(Douglas Fowler, A Reader’s Guide to "Gravity’s Rainbow," Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1980, p. 50-51)