The Hyperobject's Atomization of "Self" in Gravity's Rainbow

Abstract

This article further inspects the Rocket and Schwarzgerat at the center of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1974). Though scholars commonly employ the Rocket as a metaphor and symbol by which they analyze plot and characters, I inverse this approach to see what the plot and characters can reveal about the Rocket qua Rocket. Drawing from Object-Oriented Ontology—specifically Timothy Morton’s concept of the “hyperobject,” or an entity that is dispersed through time and space—I claim that the Rocket functions as a hyperobject. The tendency of scholars to avoid a claim of reality towards the Rocket, I argue, is an echo of Western philosophy’s long valorization of the epistemological over the ontological that parallels unavailability with unreality. A reading the Rocket as hyperobject reveals a plot of ontological uncertainty unfolding in the characters’ search for inherently recessive entities.