Gravitys Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow Characters

Gravity's Rainbow mentions about 400 characters by name, but the most important ones are Tyrone Slothrop, Captain Blicero, Katje Borgesius, Oberst Enzian, Edward Pointsman, and Major Marvy.

Gravity's Rainbow Summary

Each of the four parts of Gravity's Rainbow are broken into separate "episodes," as delineated by rows of squares. There are 73 episodes in the novel as a whole.

Part One: "Beyond the Zero" (21 episodes)

Set during the end of World War II, American soldier Tyrone Slothrop is stationed in London, where he monitors V-2 rocket attacks from the Germans. Unbeknownst to Slothrop, a secret government organization called the Firm has been tracking his sexual activity, which inexplicably syncs up with the bombings. Members of the PISCES (Psychological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender) section of the Firm, including Teddy Bloat and Pirate Prentice, have discovered that the locations of the bombings in London correspond to where Slothrop has recently had a sexual affair.

Dr. Edward Pointsman, who works for PISCES, believes the uncanny sexual correlation with the rockets is due to experimental testing Slothrop underwent as a baby. Slothrop's parents allowed the scientist Laszlo Jamf to experiment on Slothrop, conditioning him to have an erection to certain stimuli in exchange for a scholarship to Harvard when the child came of age. Although Pointsman wants to study Slothrop directly, his supervisors give him the octopus Grigori instead.

Fig. 2L Instead of directly studying Slothrop, Pointsman is given an octopus to train.

Members of PISCES interrogate Slothrop at their headquarters in the White Visitation, a former psychiatric hospital now dedicated to developing psychological weapons to use against the Nazis. Currently, researchers are attempting to discover how to shame the Germans using racial anxieties and the country's imperialistic past. They hope to drive divisions between Black German researchers and their Aryan counterparts.

Part Two: "Une Perm au Casino Hermann Goering" (8 episodes)

Slothrop's superiors send him to the French Riveria, where Katje Borgesius, an employee at the White Visitation, is given the assignment of seducing him. Katje came to the White Visitation after working with the Nazis and being forced into sexual slavery by a German officer named Blicero. Katje is introduced to Slothrop when agents of the White Meditation stage a ruse in which the octopus Grigori attacks Katje and Slothrop has to "save" her. Katje and Slothrop begin a sexual relationship.

Slothrop meets Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck, an agent from the White Visitation, who teaches him about rockets. Slothrop later learns the Germans have a special rocket with the improbable serial number 00000 and a mysterious component called S-Gerät. He becomes obsessed with learning more about the rocket.

Fig. 3: The novel centers around the development and dispatch of V-2 rockets.

Part Three: "In the Zone" (32 episodes)

Slothrop becomes increasingly paranoid, suspecting a global conspiracy against him. Slothrop calls these forces "They," and They haunt him wherever he goes. Slothrop flees the military and finds refuge in "The Zone," a devastated post-war Europe. In Switzerland, he searches for information on the mysterious rocket and Laszlo Jamf's experiments.

Slothrop keeps traveling and meets an African man named Enzian, who is trying to build a rocket with other Herero scientists, and a witch named Geli Tripping, who is the lover of a dangerous Russian colonel named Tchitcherine. Slothrop tours rocket factories where the V-2 rockets were assembled. He continues on his quest.

Slothrop eventually meets a silent film actress named Margherita, who knows more about the 00000 rocket than she lets on. She takes him on a private yacht, where the passengers spontaneously engage in a massive orgy. During this time, Slothrop has sex with Margherita's teenage daughter, Bianca. Slothrop falls overboard but is rescued and taken to Peenemünde, the Soviet-occupied rocket launch site. When he returns to the boat, he finds Bianca dead.

Fig. 4: Slothrop spends time with a film actress on a yacht.

Slothrop learns more about his childhood and helps to save Enzian's men from an American man named Major Marvy, who was working with Tchitcherine to attack them. Slothrop participates in a festival in which he wears a pig costume. Afterward, he goes to a brothel where he has sex with a prostitute. Marvy is in the same building and puts on the pig costume right before the establishment is raided by the police. Agents working for Pointsman mistakenly abduct and castrate Marvy, thinking it is Slothrop in the costume. Pointsman is forced to resign in disgrace because of the blunder.

Part Four: The Counterforce (12 episodes)

Meanwhile, Katje and Pirate join a rebel faction in the White Visitation that comes to be called the counterforce. Set in opposition to the emerging industrial-military complex of war-torn Europe, the counterforce plans to save Slothrop. Slothrop, however, gradually goes insane until his sense of self becomes entirely fragmented.

The novel becomes increasingly disjointed and ambiguous as it draws to the end. Blicero puts his young lover Gottfried inside rocket 00000. Meanwhile, the 1940s plot is intercut with a contemporary scene from the novel's publication (1970s), as a rocket arches through the sky above a movie theater.

Gravity's Rainbow Literary Analysis

Most editions of Gravity's Rainbow clock in at over 700 pages, while the text itself is quite dense and full of intricate world-building and a sprawling character list. Because of its themes and structure, Gravity's Rainbow is considered a prime example of a postmodern novel.

Gravity's Rainbow Themes

Gravity's Rainbow examines themes like technology, power, identity, and paranoia as Slothrop navigates a post-war world full of deadly rockets and dangerous conspiracies.

Technology and Power

Throughout the entire novel, different countries and groups of people vie for control over weapons of war, specifically the V-2 rockets. Weapons become highly sought after in the novel, as whoever has the best technology has the advantage over their enemies. Slothrop becomes PISCES's most crucial research subject after the organization decides he is the key to understanding and predicting V-2 strikes. Pointsman believes Slothrop can control this dangerous technology, which makes him both valuable as a source of power and a threat if the power is turned against the Americans.

The intersection between technology and power is a recurring theme throughout the novel, as all different groups, from the Schwarzkommando to the Germans to the Americans, attempt to learn more about rockets and build their own. For Enzian, technology becomes the primary way to save and preserve the Hereros from outside threats, and he even considers sacrificing himself.

The novel ends with the image of Blicero's 00000 and a contemporary rocket launched into the air, reinforcing the idea that technology is the most important and dangerous source of power and conflict in the novel.

Identity and Paranoia

Throughout Gravity's Rainbow, Slothrop loses his sense of self as paranoia sinks in. He starts to question who he can trust and even who he is. Organizations like PISCES do not view Slothrop as an individual but as an object to be used against their enemies. After watching many of his acquaintances disappear, Slothrop realizes how little control he has over his own life.

Fig. 5: Slothrop's sense of self becomes fragmented as he slips into paranoia.

Slothrop flees his military responsibilities to pursue more knowledge about the rockets and his childhood. It isn't until PISCES starts pursuing him that Slothrop even learns about his experimentation as a child and how his identity is intricately connected to Laszlo Jamf. The further Slothrop delves into his identity and research, the more his paranoia grows. Slothrop eventually loses all sense of self and becomes a fragmented shell of his former self.

Gravity's Rainbow Meaning

Pynchon has never spoken to the meaning of the title Gravity's Rainbow, but some scholars have hypothesized that the title refers to the arc of V-2 rockets. These German-designed rockets were launched into the air and designed to fall back to earth and destroy Allied cities. The positive connotation of the word "rainbow" is set in stark opposition to the violent and dark subject matter of the novel. The narrator also implies that the "rainbow" is an orbit of violence and devastation that the characters are unable to escape:

Gravity's Rainbow is a satirical piece that uses dark humor and a comically unrealistic plot to criticize the widespread corruption of power after World War II. The novel's American, English, and German characters are gross stereotypes that care more about power than justice. Even after the war ends, authority figures only care about acquiring more weapons and outperforming their rivals.