47 pages • 1 hour read

V.

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1963

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-10

Chapters 11-13

Chapter 14-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Keep Cool But Care

Throughout V., the characters struggle to form meaningful connections; social alienation makes their lives lack purpose or meaning. The jazz musician McClintic Sphere uses the phrase “Keep Cool But Care” as a motif, reminding himself not to fall into the same morass of nihilism as the Whole Sick Crew, who chastise one another for dropping the veil of detached irony, performing coolness at all times. By repeating his words of balance, McClintic stays on the Crew’s periphery.

McClintic’s mantra provides an insightful diagnosis of his society—and offers a solution. There is no magical cure for alienation. Rather, the mantra preaches the importance of connection—to work, to those around him, to art. Just as the Crew’s endless parade of parties cements that pattern of behavior, McClintic’s repetition of this phrase forms a habit that brings meaning to his life—purposeful hard work, unlike the circular and pointless effort of someone like Stencil, is necessary to happy.

Most people who hear McClintic’s mantra do not follow his suggestion. The only exception is Paola. When she meets him, she is estranged from her husband Pappy Hod, and she is working as a prostitute to earn enough money to remain in America. After spending time with McClintic, she embraces his ideas. She embraces her emotions, returns to Malta, reunites with Pappy, and repairs her marriage—the closest the novel comes to a happy ending. The resolution of Paola’s story illustrates the success of McClintic’s message.

Yo-Yo

Yo-yos are a key symbol in the novel, used to explain the simultaneous pointlessness and frenetic activity that define the postmodern world.

Profane is often described as a human yo-yo, bouncing around the US with no direction, caught in a particularly juvenile pattern. His inner life is similarly rapid, jerky, predictable, and futile. However much he charges ahead, he cannot stop himself from returning to where he was. For all his forward momentum, Profane ends the novel in much the same emotional state as he began: detached, alienated, and incapable of love.

The image of movement without progress defines the novel. The title of Chapter 13 for example (“In which the yo-yo string is revealed as a state of mind”), suggests that being suddenly yanked to an inescapable starting place traps everyone. The postwar shock universally feels like nothing is being accomplished, as the end of history and the desire to stop being human imply the impossibility of moving beyond a predetermined boundary. Stencil, Rachel, and Paola are all caught in a temporal yo-yo, shuttling between present and past. Paola bounces back and forth between America and the place of her birth, Stencil bounces between himself and his father, and Rachel reunites with Profane only to have the relationship fall apart again.

There is another, more sinister valence to the yo-yo. Pynchon is deeply concerned with systems of power, as his novels examine the way capitalism and authoritarianism intertwine in the war years. The novel’s yo-yo is the product of Yoyodyne, a company that begins as a manufacturer of toys, but becomes a conglomerate that is part of the military-industrial complex. The intrusion of violence into organizations that seek financial power is a theme that recurs in other Pynchon novels, such as Gravity’s Rainbow, which features some of the characters from V.

Alligators

Profane finds a job hunting alligators in the sewers under New York City. Once prized pets, these animals were flushed down toilets when they grew too large. The alligators symbolize the commodification of culture and the triumph of aesthetics over ethics. Lurking in dark subterranean spaces, the alligators embody the emptiness of being obsessed with fads, which must be flushed away to make room for new crazes. Their disposable existence is a living indictment of commodified consciousness.

Hunting the alligators is a capitalist solution. In keeping with this, the men are underpaid and overworked; the market seeks to undervalue their work to increase profits, while the state cannot afford to address the root causes of the problem.

Profane’s response to the demoralizing nature of this job is anti-capitalist—he seeks connection with the marginalized being he has been sent to exterminate. The fact that he treats them like people causes readers to reevaluate the alligators’ existence entirely, making the work of killing these creatures read more like the novel’s other genocides.