Gravity's Rainbow

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1973

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3, Section 1

Part 3, Section 2

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Rockets

The V2 rockets used by the Nazis to bomb London are one of the most important symbols in Gravity’s Rainbow. The title refers to the flight path of the rockets, in which they fly high into the air and then arc back down to the Earth when gravity takes control. The rockets have fuel and power enough to reach the upper limits of the atmosphere, representing the human desire to ascend into the heavens and escape the confines of the Earth. However, the way in which gravity inevitably wrests back control of the rockets and drags them back to the ground with devastating effect is a symbolic illustration of the decline in human ambition. At once, the rockets are at the cutting edge of what humanity can achieve. They are a technological frontier that can astound and terrify in equal measure, so much so that many of the characters become religiously obsessed with them. For all their advanced technology, however, the rockets never escape the atmosphere. Rather than bring about transcendence, they only bring about death and suffering. According to the rockets’ symbolism, humanity peaks at the apex of the rockets’ parabolic flight; afterward, humanity and the rockets themselves fall back down in a crushing, destructive manner.

Both Blicero and Enzian understand rocket flight as a quasi-religious experience. Blicero is tired of the cycle of death he sees around him, and he wants to bring about change in the world by firing Gottfried into the heavens. Enzian performs a similar ritual, hoping he can save his people by placing himself inside a rocket and sacrificing himself in a religious ceremony. The results of these sacrificial acts are never shown. Instead, the religious symbology remains hidden; the rockets as religious symbols are powerful not because they work but because people invest them with meaning. The rockets symbolize humanity’s desire to invest meaning into something—or anything—when the world seems devoid of substance.

To Slothrop, the rockets represent the unknowable trauma of the past. He somehow becomes sexually aroused at the future locations of rocket attacks, potentially due to psychological experiments performed at him from a young age. His investigation into the rockets, therefore, is an investigation into himself. However, he abandons this chase. By rejecting the rockets, Slothrop is symbolically acknowledging that the pain and the trauma of the past are unknowably overwhelming.

Drugs

Drug use is rampant throughout Gravity’s Rainbow. The characters who use drugs are often searching for substance and meaning in their lives; after attempting traditional means of finding such meaning, they turn to chemically altered perception. In this respect, drugs symbolize a desire to reorient the perception of society. Having become alienated and untethered from society and its institutions, characters take drugs so that they can view the world in a different way, embracing a different consciousness. These drugs can be dangerous and addictive, but the characters are desperate for change, and the constant drug use symbolizes a deep, painful yearning for meaning through whatever means necessary. The characters are desperate to feel something, even if that feeling is chemically fabricated, and even if those chemicals could cause long term damage.

Among those who take drugs in the novel, the more scientific characters do so out of their need to control. Laszlo Jamf and other chemists invent or mix their own drugs, allowing them to tailor their perception to exact requirements. These concoctions can be used to keep people energized and alert in combat situations (such as amphetamines); they can be used during interrogations to make prisoners tell the truth; or they can be used like opium as a way to control entire swaths of people in other countries, such as the control of the opium market in China. The creation and distribution of drugs becomes one way in which the characters can reassert control over a society that seems to have abandoned rules and conventions. By controlling a recipe, a dosage, or access to a drug, characters can ensure that this small part of the world behaves as expected. They need to control their existence, and drugs are one of the few reliable methods of doing so.

The sale of drugs also symbolizes the decline of social institutions. Throughout the Zone, there quickly emerges a black market in which people like Slothrop are traveling back and forth across Europe with vast quantities of illegal drugs, and the market’s illegality represents the decay of societal rules and conventions. The narcotics market is a concurrent economy that echoes legitimate institutions while also parodying them. Drugs are supposedly illegal in Europe, but they have been outlawed by the same states that have waged two World Wars. The existence and the prevalence of this drug market evinces formidable consumer demand, but it also symbolizes the extent to which people no longer believe in the states and institutions, especially with regards to legitimacy. After the horrors of two wars waged by supposedly legitimate institutions, there is no longer anyone who can say what is legitimate and what is not. Purely by existing, the narcotics black market illustrates the alienation from social institutions that is prevalent in the novel.

Costumes and Clothes

Costumes and clothes represent the way in which identity is a shifting unknown. Slothrop’s journey through the Zone is an attempt to understand his true identity, and, throughout this journey, his changing clothes become symbolic. He loses his uniform in Monaco before disguising himself as a British intelligence agent, then as Rocketman, then as the Pig-Hero, and as a Russian officer. Each time Slothrop changes his clothes, he changes his self-definition. He adopts the fictional identity of Rocketman due to the chance acquisition of an opera costume. This identity becomes known across the Zone, featuring in graffiti and local folklore. Rocketman becomes more famous than Slothrop ever was, but the identity is discarded, nonetheless. Characters are able to change their identities as easily as they change their clothes, symbolizing the extent to which nothing is permanent or true in the Zone. At best, characters and their identities are an ever-changing amalgam of various factors that can be completely altered at a moment’s notice. Identity, like everything else in the Zone, becomes untethered and scattered.

Even in the Zone, however, military uniforms mean something. Characters like Marvy cannot recognize Slothrop when he is wearing another uniform; they see the insignia and the meaning of the clothes, rather than the people wearing them. These military uniforms allude to institutions and structures that people once depended upon. The military was a reliable social institution that was a key part of every state. In the wake of World War II, however, such institutions can no longer be trusted. The trauma endured by men in the military—as well as the trauma inflicted on the rest of the world by militaries—removes the social trust in these institutions. The uniforms become symbols of the hollowing out of public institutions: Like Marvy can only recognize the latent authority of a uniform rather than the identity of the person wearing it, people can only recognize the vague outlines of the social institutions but can no longer invest themselves in institutions themselves. Military uniforms are as vacuous and as meaningless as the institutions they represent.