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whereas the pig sustains it, a binary that creates assumptions that the key
symbolic structure of Gravity’s Rainbow is formed around a centralized
rocket with a panoptic gaze of everything contained within the work.
But Pynchon’s pigs are even more significant, a fact that ultimately
undermines the rocket and pig binary—they are complex, polysemous
creatures imbued with transgressive sexuality and romantic pastoralism;
they are syncretized with Norse myths and Christian symbols of salvation
and sacrifice. Finally, these pigs function on a metafictional level, not only
sustaining the narrative of Gravity’s Rainbow, but swinishly reconstructing
the identity of the reader.
Critical study of the animals that inhabit Pynchon’s texts is not a
new approach; Katalin Orban in her essay, “Werebeavers of the World,
Unite? Animals on the Verge of Readability in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels,”
argues that animals are accessible symbols in his works because they are
less complicated than his often cryptic human characters—or, for that
matter, any aspect of the text entirely. Orban observes the daunting task
of approaching a text such as Gravity’s Rainbow:
For one of the intriguing things about Pynchon’s longer works
… is how difficult they are to address critically: given their vast
encyclopedic vistas, it seems that focusing on any aspect, let
alone detail of the text amounts to simplification and unfair
misrepresentation. (96-97)
Providing a less complex lens through which to examine the text, animals
“make an important contribution to the breakdown of rigid hierarchies
of meaning in . . . Pynchon narratives,” (Orban 96). However, Pynchon’s
pigs do not simply break down a hierarchy—they also reconstruct it in a
new binary form, thus allowing the reader to glean an understanding of
Gravity’s Rainbow through, for example, a science versus nature dichotomy.
Orban recognizes that “Pynchon’s animals never stay quite comfortably
within the notion of the simple, natural, innocent counterpart to the
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violent complexity of civilization and culture, yet never quite disengage
completely from that romantic notion” (96). Orban, however, does
nothing more to demonstrate the complex symbolism of the pig in the
text, as if the statement was made merely as a safeguard from future refute.
To state that the pig is more complex than a romantic representation
and to fail to investigate it further over-simplifies the complexities of
Pynchon’s beloved creature. Moreover, critically—and specifically—
frolicking with the pigs of Gravity’s Rainbow is substantiated by Pynchon’s
personal affinity to them; Steven Weisenburger’s methodically researched
A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion contains a biographical note: as Pynchon
drafted the novel “his bookcase . . . had rows of piggy banks on each
shelf and there was a collection of books and magazines about pigs” (55).
Weisenburger’s insight confirms the relevancy of studying Pynchon’s
beloved pigs.
Patrick J. Hurley discusses the pig in more depth in his essay,
“Pynchon, Grimm and Swinish Duality: A Note on the Pig Image in
Gravity’s Rainbow.” Hurley states that the pig represents a “dualistic image
of sacrifice and redemption” (208), and identifies Pynchon’s use of Jacob
Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, a primary source that permeates the themes
and motifs of the novel. Hurley connects a note from Grimm’s book on
animal sacrifice: the pig is “selected immediately after birth, and marked,
and then reared with the rest until the time of sacrificing’’ (208). Hurley
then connects this process of selection at birth to Slothrop, whose parents
volunteer him to undergo psychological experimentation as an infant.
Slothrop is secretly monitored by Them growing up, goes to Harvard, and
joins the service until his sacrifice is ordered—first as a castration, and
eventually as Tyrone’s scattering across the Zone.
Hurley also suggests that Slothrop identifies with the swine while in
bed with Katje. Their sexual encounter takes on a piggish nature: “’Oh,’
Katje groans, somewhere under a pile of their batistes and brocade,
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