A Study On The Thought Of Technology Of Thomas Pynchon’s Fictions

Thomas Pynchon is one of the most important American postmodernist writers of the post-World War Ⅱ period. He published seven fictions from the year of1963, which includes V., Lot49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Vineyard, Mason and Dixon, Inherent Vice and Against the Day, and a collection of short stories named Slow Learner. With its peculiar design, complex content, profound thoughts, absurd and obscure narration, Pynchon’s fictions depict a constantly declining entropic post-modern society.Pynchon’s writings are well-known for their obscurity and difficulty. Each work of Pynchon would cause a sensation in the literary world and lead to a boom of evaluation and interpretation of itself. Thomas Pynchon is an encyclopedic contemporary American novelist writing in the postmodernist context, with a good knowledge in many fields of human sciences including political, economic, historical, cultural, social, and scientific issues, so the general evaluation of his works made by the critics are diversified. And the element of science and technology which appears in some of his works causes the attention of literary critics. Pynchon sets the scientific formulas, theorems and concepts as the creative thoughts and the symbols of bis works to construct a chaotic, fantastic and mysterious world of technology. Based on the Neil Postmen’s technological monopoly thoughts and Foucault’s conception of power, this paper makes a study of Pynchon’s technical thoughts through textual analysis of the features of technology presented in his works.This paper is divided into three chapters:the first chapter presents the technological signs and human alienation in character images, according to textual reading. And analyses the mentality: blind worship and superstition of science and technology. These lead to the alienation of the science and technology and that of human being. The second chapter based on the technopoly theory, analyses the reflection in Pynchon’s works on men’s worship of science and technology. He dissects men’s insularity under the alienation of science and technology through the analysis of the relationship between men and science and technology, men and society as well as men and men. The third chapter, in the post-industrial society and the era of technopoly, individuals become the "One-Dimensional Men." Pynchon makes a prescription for men, which is to set foot on the constantly journey of pursuit. Pynchon believes that the only way for man to resist the entropic society is to go into action and take the initiative to break the rigid enclosed space, to consciously reject the alienation that science and technology brings to human being, to promote people-to-people exchanges and to seek the self-worth and the sense of humanity.