Out Of The Temporal-Spatial Fragments And Narrative Labyrinth

V. is the first novel by Thomas Pynchon, a contemporary American writer and one of the leading figures of American Black Humor. Through two main narrative lines, which are Profane's aimless wandering on the streets of New York City in 1950s and Stencil's search for the mysterious V., Pynchon constructs a deep V-shaped narrative trace inside the novel. The two main characters are both fighting against the inanimate world in their own way. However, this struggle is doomed to be a failure on account of the overall pessimistic tone of this novel. When Profane and Stencil have all perished in the sea, the apparent entropic theme of V. is revealed at the end of this novel.The novel discards the linear narrative mode of traditional novels, endowing narrative time and space with new connotations and forms, which makes the novel itself full of randomness and uncertainty. In this novel, the post-modern techniques of chaotic arrangement of time and space and juxtaposition of plots are frequently used. Pynchon's special treatment of narrative time and space functions as the main approach to display the content and the entropic theme of V..By the complexity displayed in narrative time and space, he conveys to readers that an orderly world no longer exists. At the same time, he uses the polysemy of V to symbolize the game-like relationship between language and meaning.The reason for Pynchon's uniqueness in the circle of contemporary American writers is that he breaks the linear structure of time and space in traditional novels. Thus, the labyrinth of time and space makes the work full of narrative tension. Readers have to reconstruct the fragments of time and space of the novel while reading it. Only in this way can the fragmental clues and static history be revived in their mind and the completely new temporal and spatial order be rebuilt. This ingenious narrative method renders the work full of intense artistic charm.The thesis has 5 chapters, with the body part covering 3. Chapter one is an introduction of the objectives and significance of the present study on Pynchon's V. and his other works. Chapter two is the brief introduction to the influence and unique style of Pynchon's works. It also summarizes the status quo of the research on Pynchon's works. Chapter Three introduces the theoretical concepts in the traditional narratology, such as narrator, focalization and narrative time. Meanwhile, it briefs the use of entropic theory in literary criticism and elaborates on the combination of narrative techniques and entropic theme and their representations in postmodern works. What is included in Chapter Four is the detailed analysis of how the narratological theory is used in Pynchon's V.. It also illustrates how these narrative techniques reveal the entropic theme via black humor.The thesis tries to interpret the discourse through narratologial analysis. The analysis combines the formal aspect and content aspects, that it, combines the narrative techniques and thematic analysis. It also attempts to seek the fictional tension in temporal-spatial labyrinth.