Gravity's Rainbow

In August 1945, when Pirate Prentice flies “a more or less hijacked P-47” (466) over the mountains, Slothrop hears it pass overhead. The plane’s arrival indicates that the so-called counterforce is beginning to act. Osbie Feel is in Marseilles, and Katje is on her way to Nordhausen. In Berlin, Säure continues to argue with the composer Gustav about music. In the mountains, Slothrop looks in a stream and finds a harmonica, which “happens to be the same one he lost in 1938 or -9 down the toilet at the Roseland Ballroom, but that’s too long ago for him to remember” (468). Slothrop still hopes that once he acquires his discharge papers, he will be able to return home but then he loses all faith in the concept of papers or bureaucracy. He is tired of his journey and his self-reflection, to the point where his self feels like a burden that he must carry. Nevertheless, the moment when he lost interest in knowing his true self, he seemed to notice his self everywhere. He sees graffiti written on walls that claims “ROCKETMAN WAS HERE” (469), so he responds with graffiti of his own, drawing a rocket beneath the words. He remembers working as part of a road crew in Massachusetts, picking litter at the side of the road. As a young man, the litter seemed fascinating, but such objects no longer fit together in his understanding of the world as they once did. When he closes his eyes, he sees a rainbow. This rainbow seems to him to be phallically penetrating the earth. Slothrop cries, feeling the emptiness in his head, “just feeling natural” (471).

Driving across Lüneberg Heath, Mexico thinks about his last encounter with Jessica. She has been transferred to Cuxhaven, and he has not seen her since the Spring. At that time, she came to the White Visitation, and Mexico explained he could not bring himself to leave Slothrop in Germany, as They are trying “to destroy him” (472); even if the war is over, “Their enterprise goes on” (472). Jessica ended her affair with Mexico once the war was over, and she returned to her boyfriend Jeremy. Mexico looks back favorably on the wartime, when the rockets were falling; he and Jessica were still together then, and he refuses to believe that the war is over. Jessica wondered whether Mexico’s desire to save Slothrop was born out of nostalgia for their finished affair. She disliked Slothrop, as his libido seemed to rely “on the terror of that Rocket Blitz” (473).

After Jessica left, Mexico talked to Milton Gloaming, a spiritualist at the White Visitation. Gloaming mentioned Slothrop and Imipolex G, suggesting that Slothrop was under surveillance before the outbreak of the war. Mexico investigated and concluded that Pointsman transferred Jessica to Cuxhaven to spite Mexico. Mexico therefore confronted Pointsman during a London meeting, which ended with Mexico urinating “on the shiny table, the papers, in the ashtrays and pretty soon on these poker-faced men themselves” (478). Afterward, Mexico met with Pirate at the White Visitation. Pirate explained that Mexico had completely misunderstood Them, as he lacked a corresponding idea of “We.” These paranoid delusions are inward looking, rather than outward looking; They concern the self, not the exterior world. Gloaming introduced Mexico to the Schwarzkommando as the counterforce began to assemble in the house where Pirate, Bloat, and others lived. Now, Mexico drives to Cuxhaven.

In a German forest in Thuringia, Private Eddie Pensiero uses the light from a single bulb to cut the hair of a colonel from Kenosha. A soldier powers the generator with his hand to keep the lightbulb alive. Eddie, “an amphetamine enthusiast” (482), cuts the colonel’s hair one hair at a time while the colonel talks effusively about “these sunsets.” Outside, an unseen person plays a harmonica. As the colonel tells a story about exploring a ruin, the narrative twists and turns on more “senseless and retrograde journeys” (485). Topics covered in the shifting narration include Leid-Stadt (a German word for Pain City) and a place named Happyville beneath a mountain where the colonel examines Laszlo Jamf, who has been “preserved like a ‘37 Ford against the World’s ups and downs” (486). The narrative changes again, telling the story of the apparently immortal lightbulb that is being powered by one of the soldiers. The Story of Byron the Bulb includes the time before the lightbulb was made in Berlin; the international lightbulb cartel Phoebus tracks every lightbulb in existence but is yet unaware that “Byron is immortal” (488). This immortality is an issue for the cartel as Phoebus carefully controls the life and efficiency of every lightbulb, ensuring they and their conspiratorial partners can always make money. Though he knows about the conspiracy, Byron can do nothing but continue to be a lightbulb. He is “powerless to change anything” (492). In Happyville, the colonel and Jamf parts ways while Eddie holds his scissors over the vein in the colonel’s neck.

Katje meets members of the Herero community. They sing, dance, and carry a girl above their heads as part of the ritual celebrations. Katje realizes that the girl “is none other than herself” (494), due to her past life with Blicero, which has now become part of the rocket-infused culture of the Herero people. Katje meets Enzian. They have both survived Blicero’s abuse, and they discuss the past. Enzian claims that Katje’s story is sadder than his own, as she has “only been set free” (497). Forming an alliance, Enzian tells Katje to search for Slothrop; once she finds him, he says, she will be free. Katje is committed to the cause as she wants to know whether she is in any way responsible for what They did to Slothrop. She wants to stop Them. Enzian explains that the Hereros have captured Thanatz, who was recently with Blicero before “the end of a man [they] both loved” (498). Katje wants to listen to the interrogation of Thanatz.

Under interrogation, Thanatz explains what happened to him, beginning with the Anubis. He was knocked overboard during the storm (like Slothrop), but after being taken ashore, Thanatz found a village of former Camp Dora prisoners. The men were 175s, the bureaucratic term for the gay men imprisoned by the Nazis. Having been freed from the camps, the 175s had recreated elements of the prison camp in the village, including pretend-Nazi officers to maintain discipline. The head of the officers was given the title Blicero, based on the now infamous figure whom the 175s described as “the Zone’s worst specter” (501). Thanatz was troubled by the men’s belief that Blicero was still alive; he saw Blicero fire the 00000, and the incident made Thanatz leave Blicero. He was captured by Polish insurgents who were searching for someone else, so they left him at a refugee camp. He traveled by train “along with 1,999 others being sent west to Berlin” (503). In the interrogation, Thanatz reveals to the Hereros so many details about Rocket 00000 that they see him as “the angel they’ve hoped for” (506); they have a rocket of their own, “all assembled at last, their single A4 scavenged all summer piece by piece” (506), which they hope will unite the disparate Herero factions.

In the past, Slothrop is in Rocket City (Raketen-Stadt in German). In a breathless style based on the comic books of the 1940s, Slothrop—then “a cheerful and a plucky enough lad” (507)—dodges his father’s repeated murder attempts. He taunts his father, then forms a group called the Floundering Four with three other characters: Myrtle can cause miracles to happen; Marcel is a chess-playing machine; and Maximillian has such a good sense of rhythm that he understands even the rhythm of the universe. The Floundering Four search for the Radiant Hour, a specific hour that is being held prisoner. Their quest is divided into smaller subsections; the chronology is erratic.

Slothrop listens to a German submarine and tries to communicate with the anarchists from Argentina. Säure and Bodine discuss a crude English idiom and music. Bodine sings about drugs in the building where Säure lives among others who have addictions; these people attempt to dig a moat around the tenement building to keep out the police, digging up from below the street. Säure and Bodine discuss another idiom, exploring every possible meaning of the curse words, thereby connecting various threads of the narrative. Slothrop wears a woman’s evening gown in a public bathroom, where a “small ape or orangutan” (518) hangs a “round black iron anarchist bomb” (519) around his neck. Before the bomb can explode, the actress Margaret O’Brien throws the bomb into a toilet where it explodes. Later, a gang attacks a man who is dressed like Margaret O’Brien, blaming the man for the incident with the bomb. Two kamikaze pilots named Takeshi and Ichizo are “the only two Kamikazes out here at this air base, which is rather remote actually” (520).

The narrative jumps momentarily in the future: An archeologist explores World War II ruins in Germany and lectures about the role of chaplains in the military; they “talked to the men who were going to die about God, death, nothingness, redemption, salvation” (522).

The narrative time shifts again: In a bar in a German city, Slothrop sees a picture in a newspaper that looks like a white penis dangling in a dark sky. The headline explains that an atomic bomb has been dropped on the Japanese city Hiroshima. When the police plan to raid a tenement building, the narrator explains, they “shut off the water” (523) first so that the residents cannot flush illicit substances down the toilet. Takeshi and Ichizo, bored on their remote air base, jokingly threaten each other with machine guns.

In the past, Slothrop’s father Broderick warns his son about a new practice among young people that involves “shooting electricity into head” (527); he warns that, during such stimulation, the person might never return to their old selves, and the young Slothrop points out that this is what every “electrofreak” hopes will happen. The final short subsection is a description of Imipolex G, the first “erectile” plastic that is able to respond to simulation.

At an unspecified moment in time, Tchitcherine is being pursued by the Commissariat for Intelligence Activities, Nicoloai Riprov. Feeling as though he is finally out on his own, “though there’s noplace for him to go” (529), Tchitcherine remembers conversations with a drug dealer named Wimpe who recommended Oneirine. The drug induces “the dullest hallucinations known to psychopharmacology” (531). Having taken Oneirine, Tchitcherine experiences such a hallucination: He feels as though he is being interrogated, but he asks questions, asking whether his bosses in the Soviet Union expect him to die. Riprov (or whoever is conducting the interrogation) assures Tchitcherine he is “not much use dead” (532). Riprov suggests that Tchitcherine’s pursuit of Enzian has been orchestrated to help Them keep track of Enzian. Now, Riprov suggests, Tchitcherine and German scientists will be sent to a new rocket research program in Central Asia. To Tchitcherine, the assignment feels “operationally” just like death.

The counterforce meets in a German bar. The members include Roger Mexico, Thomas Gwenhidwy, Carroll Eventyr, and Morituri. Together, they deduce that Rocket 00000 was programmed to fire toward the “true North.” Mexico remembers when Jessica told him she wanted to have a child with Jeremy. Mexico promised to love her, even if she had another man’s child. Their conversation was interrupted by Jeremy, who had forgiven Jessica for her affair. Trying to be friendly and polite, Jeremy befriended Mexico, though Jessica was colder toward her former lover. Jeremy and Mexico talked about British plans to fire captured A4 rockets into the North Sea because they cannot think of anything else to “do with a rocket” (537). He invited Mexico to a gathering at the house of a former manager at the Krupp arms company named Stefan Utgarthaloki. Mexico accepted and brought Bodine (dressed in a fashionable white suit) as company. At this time, Slothrop is “scattered all over the Zone” (539), unlikely to be found or even identified. At the party, Mexico played a game of “culinary pranksterism” with Bodine while entertaining paranoid thoughts. They eat dinner while trying to outdo one another in their descriptions of horrific, sickening ideas for recipes. Most of the guests are disgusted; Jeremy and Jessica leave, with Jessica in tears and Jeremy “shaking his head at [Mexico’s] folly” (543).

As August drifts into September, Geli Tipping works with another witch to locate Tchitcherine using their powers. Geli fears that Tchitcherine and the Schwarzkommando are fated to collide with each other, while Tchitcherine is also being pursued by one of the top Soviet agents, Riprov. Geli believes herself attuned to the world’s natural order, unlike other witches who have “a bureaucratic career in mind” (545). Most humans are only aware of the world in a cold, dead, buried way; in this sense, humans resemble God’s own counterrevolutionaries whose mission is to “promote death.” Humans have a naturally imperial instinct that suppresses ecological, environmental, and natural forces. Geli, who sides with such forces, feels a natural power rising that seems “too beautiful to bear” (547).

The narrative switches to two weeks before the end of World War II, when soon “everything will be over, Germany will have lost the War” (547). As Gottfried kneels before him, Blicero delivers a long, impassioned rant about empires and death. Gottfried thinks about the “edge of the world” (548). He believes that America was intended to be the location for “that special Death the West had invented” (549), and now he wants to break free of “this cycle of infection and death” (550).

In September 1945, Enzian and 12 Herero men take their new rocket to Lüneberg Heath. Their rocket is numbered 00001—“the second in its series” (551)—and is currently disassembled. The Herero have a religion and culture built around the flight of the rockets; good rockets take people to the stars, while an evil rocket will bring about the “World’s suicide.” Enzian and his people want to build a rocket of their own. Enzian plans to play himself onboard as a form of ritual suicide, becoming a hero for his people, but he is not sure that this sacrifice will save the Hereros.

Enzian, Katje, and the Hereros travel through the Zone, followed by Ludwig, who has finally found Ursula. Enzian and the men learn of a nearby, hostile military unit that has already killed many Herero men. Enzian signals his men to retreat to a railroad. Enzian and Josif Ombindi, the leader of the Empty Ones (a rival faction of Hereros), discuss their plans. Worried that they are being followed, Enzian sends one group of Hereros in a different direction to lure away any pursuers. Ludwig follows, feeling that he “must go with them, but separate, a stranger, no more or less at the mercy of the Zone…” (558).

Geli finds Tchitcherine “sitting by the stream, not dejected, nor tranquil, just waiting” (559). They have sex, sleep outside, and wake up to see the Herero group drive past them. Enzian stops, and Tchitcherine asks for supplies, neither man knowing they are related. Their meeting is magic “but not necessarily fantasy” (560).

A woman leads a guided tour of Rocket City on a morning in September. She mentions airplanes but not rockets, a subject “under a curious taboo” (560). The narrative switches to Ludwig and Thanatz, who talk about sadomasochistic fantasies about parental discipline. Thanatz cannot understand why such fantasies seem forbidden in society, but he answers his own questions by claiming that the structure of society needs “submission and dominance” (562) as resources used to perpetuate its survival. He envisions an alternative world that embraces Sado-anarchism.

The narrative then changes to various descriptions of mystical and religious ideas and practices, including discussions of Kabbala, Rosicrucianism, the Holy Grail, and its connection to blood. At this time, Slothrop seems as though he “is being broken down instead, and scattered” (563) throughout the Zone. Famous psychoanalyst Mickey Wuxtry-Wuxtry suggests that Slothrop invented Laszlo Jamf to explain why he was aroused by rockets. Bodine, who has deserted and now deals drugs in Germany, remembers Slothrop and believes himself “one of the few who can still see Slothrop as any sort of integral creature any more” (565).

The narrative fractures, becoming a series of 15 shorter subsections with fitful chronology. The first describes what has happened in Slothrop’s hometown in his absence, where “it will all go on, occupation or not, with or without [him]” (568).

In the second subsection, Gustav smokes hashish with Säure. He places Byron the immortal lightbulb into a kazoo he is using to smoke hashish. At the same time, Von Göll directs a film set in a “reverse world” where time moves backwards; in one scene, Von Göll smokes marijuana while sitting on a toilet.

In the third subsection, Blicero has his fortune told through Tarot cards. In the future, he will return in the form of “the successful academics, the Presidential advisers, the token intellectuals who sit on boards of directors” (573). In the fourth subsection, spring takes over Lüneberg Heath.

In the fifth subsection, people prepare to sacrifice Germany’s last horse. Other horses have been eaten or killed during World War II. The sixth subsection explores the biblical story of Abraham, whom God told to kill his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice; God intervenes at the last moment and spares Isaac’s life.

In the seventh subsection, Blicero dresses Gottfried entirely in white clothes and places him inside Rocket 00000, encasing him in a shroud made of Imipolex G, preparing to launch the rocket and send Gottfried to his death. In the eighth subsection, Gottfried looks out through a “window of artificial sapphire” (574) in Rocket 00000. The rocket has a radio communicator that allows Blicero to talk to Gottfried, but because Gottfried cannot respond, “the exact moment of his death will never be known” (575).

In the ninth subsection, the narrator discusses the conventions of comic books and superheroes: In one trope, the hero arrives at the scene too late to prevent a tragedy, though “there’s always a reprieve” (575). Recently, all the heroes have been too late. Elsewhere, Pointsman has been fired and disgraced. He is surprised that he misses the stray dogs.

In the 10th subsection, the narrator explains that the tradition of a countdown to a rocket launch was invented in movies. Kabbalist spokesman Steve Edelman examines a countdown and interprets the numbers. His reading suggests a new world will be born when the Great Rocket fires.

In the 11th subsection, Gottfried waits inside Rocket 00000 and remembers the smell of the Imipolex G from his “sweet paralyzed childhood” (578).

In the 12th subsection, the narrative jumps ahead several decades to the Orpheus Theater in Los Angeles where the manager explains to a reporter that screenings repeatedly descend into chaos when audience members play harmonicas and drown out the sound of the film.

In the 13th subsection, Blicero launches Rocket 00000. In the 14th subsection, the rocket lifts off as Gottfried hears the sound of the fuel being burned and then notices when it stops. The rocket reaches its peak and begins to fall back to Earth.

In the 15th and final subsection, the audience at the Orpheus Theater claps and shouts because the movie has ended unexpectedly. The rocket reaches a peak in the air above the theater and gives the audience members enough time to reach out to the person next to them one last time. They may even choose to sing a hymn. The narrative switches to Slothrop’s ancestor, William, who wrote a hymn that assured the preterite people who live outside of God’s grace that they may one day find the light. The narrator addresses the audience, encouraging them to sing along, saying, “[N]ow, everybody—” (583).