Gravity's Rainbow

Paranoia, broadly speaking, is defined as a baseless suspicion of others, their motives, or their actions. However, the novel presents a thematic paranoia that is both more complex and more extreme, resembling a psychotic symptomatology: suspicions (and perhaps delusions) of persecution, surveillance, or self-importance, often involving elaborate conspiracy theories or organized systems of oppression. The novel is never explicit or precise about such a diagnosis in any character, nor does Pynchon seem concerned with any literal, clinical pathology—but this special inflection of paranoia, elaborate and compulsive, pervades the narrative.

In this vein, Slothrop is a very paranoid person, living in a very paranoid society. Characters attribute their suffering to conspiracy theories and believe that they are being followed, monitored, or otherwise targeted by the mysterious group known only as Them. They are never described in detail; each character has a different interpretation of Them, based solely on their own unique paranoias and beliefs. To Slothrop, They are a mixture of intelligence agencies, chemical companies, and antagonistic individuals all conspiring to target him. As a result of his paranoia, he blames Them for everything that goes wrong. Stolen clothes, unexpected abductions, minor injuries, regular inconveniences, and cases of mistaken identity are all the result of the grand conspiracy with Slothrop at the center. Due to the nature of paranoia, many other characters feel the same way. The paranoid turns each character into a protagonist in their own unique story, in which they are the most important figure who is worthy of surveillance.

The irony of Slothrop’s paranoia is that he is justified. He is being surveilled by government agencies, he was subject to psychological experimentation as a child, and many people across the Zone are watching him closely and trying to prevent him from reaching his goals. The nature of Slothrop’s paranoia, however, means that They remain undefined. He rarely has substantial evidence that he is the target of a grand conspiracy, so his conspiracy theories remain only theories. To some extent, Slothrop is aware of his paranoia. He describes himself as paranoid and sees no point in pretending otherwise. His delusions, if they are delusions, therefore operate similarly to the Zone: His paranoia is nebulous, vague, and completely justified, illustrating the extent of his separation from the conventions of society and how he is operating in a wholly unique way. He is beyond paranoia, beyond truth, and beyond evidence. He becomes the embodiment of a new kind of paranoia that is at once delusional and justified.

The problems with paranoia in Gravity’s Rainbow illustrate the problems inherent to a paranoid society. Paranoia can become so overwhelming that it completely takes over a person’s life, leaving them with nothing else. Lyle Bland obsesses over conspiracy theories until he leaves his family behind to completely embrace the mystical. Similarly, Slothrop becomes so intertwined with his own paranoia that his identity becomes fragmented and scattered. The paranoia threatens to become the identity, leaving nothing behind of any meaning other than the paranoid delusions that attempt to draw organizing meaning from disparate and unconnected ideas. Because this harried search for meaning in an alienated society draws connections where they do not exist, connections are not satisfying or nourishing. Paranoia becomes a metastasizing problem, growing and spreading like the Zone until all that remains is a tangled and unsubstantiated web of delusions and accusations rather than a society, a person, or anything else. Eventually, paranoia is everything.