Thomas Pynchon

White Noise, Don DeLillo’s so called “breakout” as well as noteworthy example of postmodern literature, pitches us through waves of seduction, intellectualism, humor, disaster, and the nature of human violence. The expiration of life accelerates the novel in its intended direction, of acceptance of the finite. Our narrator Jack, places power above everything, and in return is guaranteed protection from death. He duplicates Hitler from his desire of confidentiality from expiry, which in his…

Words can be very manipulative and persuasive, if used right, they can be used to get people to feel different emotions and make people do things. But also, they can be used to make people do things that they might not have ever done without hearing that speaker say what they said to them. Rhetorical and literary devices are included when people are trying to persuade and manipulate people to more effectively change peoples minds. In certain situations, this can lead to really bad endings and…

The Demon in Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 has the complex role of addressing the ideas of information, interpretation, and existence. The Demon is the functional aspect of the Nefastis machine which endlessly sorts molecules in the hopes of creating order and energy without the use of work. This process parallels Oedipa’s journey towards finding the Trystero, as she too faces the struggle of collecting information, and the problem of how to interpret the information she collects. Not only…

Introduction: Don DeLillo is an American writer born in 1936. Delillo is a postmodernist and written eleven books receiving various awards for his work. The title of DeLillo’s eighth novel, White Noise, brings many assumptions towards the overall meaning of the book. White noise is when there is a combination of sound waves together creating a constant buzz. The buzz can produce a relaxing or overwhelming feeling. Although, it depends if it refers to a repetitive noise one is trying to avoid or…

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick has long suffered from popular misconceptions surrounding the novel. Despite its near universal acclaim as the “Great American novel,” the work still struggles to find its way into the curriculum of any academic level below that of college. While I concede that teaching Moby-Dick in the high-school classroom is problematic, it seems that bringing it into a community-college syllabus is a bit more feasible. Though community-college students may often present challenges…

“You two could be siblings!” Everyone has been told this at least once in their lifetime and more times than not, the two people who could be possible siblings look nothing alike. This was a frequent issue for Felix after he met Hermann Karlovich in the novel Despair by Vladmir Nabokov. Nabokov had a common theme in many of his works and a theme that is very prevalent in this novel- fake doubles. He creates a static and narcissistic protagonist, Hermann, that propels the plot forward and sets…

remains trapped in the novel, Pynchon has nonetheless grown up. In the introduction to Slow Learners, Pynchon confesses that he has an impulse to do “some kind of a wall-to-wall rewrite” (S.L., 3). To some extent, the ending of Gravity’s Rainbow is a rewrite of the ending of Crying of Lot 49. Although the same proliferation of options happens again at the end of Gravity’s Rainbow, the endings of these two novels are in fact drastically different. In Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon merely poses four…

Are stories even more than what we know; just a fairytale that has no meaning? In the beginning of Salman Rushdie’s novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a question arises from the character of Mr. Sengupta, “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” (Rushdie 20). Throughout the story, there are many thoughts in which we can find the answer to this question. Many people may say that there is no use for stories that aren’t real in reason of they do not help us in our daily lives. What…

Finding names is not an easy task, but based on the articles, “The Weird Science of Naming New Products” by Neal Gabler and “How’d it Get That Name” by Bob Greene, it demonstrated interesting ways on how products were named. In Gabler’s article, “The Weird Science of Naming New Products”, he explains the random process in naming a virtual reality experience. They found a man named Shore who insisted in looking for ides off a science fiction website. He looks for words such as “Jumpdoor”, “Jaunte…

Freedoms such as being able to vote, express them-selves, and gain a sense of respect from others. Not only was fashion a piece of material back in the 1920’s, but also a form of movement. With the turn of the decade and fashion, women were able to speak for them-selves whether their voices were seen or heard as negative or positive. The Flapper image became negative for the elders but the image allowed young women to be able to grow out of that stage into mature women. Wanting to move out due…