Pynchon's novel takes place at the end of World War II and in my perspective is a logical and wise choice for a novel like this one. From even looking at the cover-art, the lack of summarization on the physical book itself, lack of introduction or any other type of clues that hint to the reader what is inside these pages, it is clear that Pynchon is trying to create some kind of transgressive landscape or setting in this text. Much of the first section I have read so far goes in and out of dreams, thoughts, characters, perspectives, and realities and is one of the reasons that the text is so difficult to read. And yet all of these perspectives, realities, and characters makes for a meaningful portrayal and landscape for the text at hand.
Why is World War II such a great landscape for this text? Well if one looks historically at the war and its events one can see how World War II was really an accumulation, mixing, and surmountable event that must have been incredibly hard for those who lived through it to comprehend or even fathom its existence/ occurrence. The Holocaust and the rise of Nazism, which took place during this time, was also an incredibly difficult and almost unfathomable part of World War II that must have been even more impossible to comprehend at the time. (The Holocaust was the genocide of six million Jews in Europe. This type of genocide and hatred, is something personally I find incredibly hard to understand even historically today.) In undergraduate college, I took a whole quarter of coursework on Germany leading from the end of World War I all the way through the Weimar era to the end of World War II and from what I have been able to gather from the art, readings, historical/ non-fiction texts, and the coursework I completed during this time, was that the political and social influences of this time World War I, Weimar Germany, the rise of socialism and fascism in Europe, World War II, the Holocaust, and the eventual endings of World War II created a psychological landscape in Europe that by any means was constantly in flux, and at times unfathomable. It truly was a time period that changed the world and it's cultural, social, political landscapes, and is the perfect setting for Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow and a post modern novel.
Why is World War II such a great landscape for this text? Well if one looks historically at the war and its events one can see how World War II was really an accumulation, mixing, and surmountable event that must have been incredibly hard for those who lived through it to comprehend or even fathom its existence/ occurrence. The Holocaust and the rise of Nazism, which took place during this time, was also an incredibly difficult and almost unfathomable part of World War II that must have been even more impossible to comprehend at the time. (The Holocaust was the genocide of six million Jews in Europe. This type of genocide and hatred, is something personally I find incredibly hard to understand even historically today.) In undergraduate college, I took a whole quarter of coursework on Germany leading from the end of World War I all the way through the Weimar era to the end of World War II and from what I have been able to gather from the art, readings, historical/ non-fiction texts, and the coursework I completed during this time, was that the political and social influences of this time World War I, Weimar Germany, the rise of socialism and fascism in Europe, World War II, the Holocaust, and the eventual endings of World War II created a psychological landscape in Europe that by any means was constantly in flux, and at times unfathomable. It truly was a time period that changed the world and it's cultural, social, political landscapes, and is the perfect setting for Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow and a post modern novel.
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