Rick-Phil’s Reviews > Gravity's Rainbow > Status Update

I have learned so much about behavioralism and psychological games from this novel

Interesting how far one goes to experiment on behavior, whether it is dog-napping with ether, or maintaining a hold on a person. Pointsman's dignity is rather interesting, esp. in contrast to the shrill outbursts, canine experimentation, & the ironic toilet bowl on his foot.

This section seems to further suspicions about psychology, the displacement of God as locus and the natural and industrial conceptions of mercy

of course, it could be heroicism is a word for something involving love.

I think the way Pirate relates with bananas, dreams, and his friends points to something different than his role as a captain in the military. I suspect this will be a major theme throughout the book.

after all, what is more life-affirming than breakfast?the banana's aroma replaces the scents of clamorous,drunken, miasmata. In the strangest way, Pirate's choice to pick bananas seems life-affirming in its commitment to his dream & the salience of bananas for others where there are none. He does not attempt evacuation, he allows assembly for an almost last breakfast. How should we die: attempting heroics,or in love?

Fascinating how bananas and their requisite summer climate are so impacting for Pirate. His dream of feeding England's partygoers banana breakfasts so dear to him that it is compared with a conjurer telling death to fuck off, noting that in the genetic chains: the faces of ancient dear ones form labyrinths.
It almost seems the bananas are a protection for people almost as much as they allow a place of summer.

I love the juxtaposition of the evacuation and warning people, of saving Bloat and only allowing yourself to count bananas as the missile plummets, the red daybreak with the burning rocket and the frozen sweat after entering tropical twilight.
Pynchon's narration takes this story to the next level though. A non-omniscient narrator, seeming transfixed next to pirate, almost talking to him and the audience directly...

Seeing Pirate begin to find a sort of anxiety toward time and seasons, the grayness of winter that ages summer, or a sort of radiant and humid sense of fruitfulness (or banananess) is quite intriguing. The nervousness toward missing sunlight, aging architecture, seems to point toward something more worrisome than a bomb. Pirate's morality even seems caught between friends and obligations for a whole city.

interesting. the living decompositionaly transformed into fertilizer for the living.

Pynchon is brilliant with old and young, ancient and modern, dead and living, saved and condemned, above and below, freely lit and darkly obscure all weaving in and out of this dream. The endarkened setting littered with sound, texture, and smells builds the drama of the evacuative performance: the people are not saved but packed in to die: a judgement for which there is no appeal.