Passage Analysis of Thomas Pynchon’s “Entropy”

Thomas Pynchon’s “Entropy”

Thomas Pynchon’s “Entropy” is a story that takes the reader on a journey into the minds of different people who live in an apartment building. The setting is February, 1957 in Washington D.C. The story focuses on two narratives by Meatball and Callisto, and the temperature outside is a constant 57 degrees Fahrenheit. The particular passage from “Entropy” symbolizes the themes of the story: chaotic uniformity, entropy, distorted communication, and pessimism.

The passage connects the two main characters in the story even though they are both unaware of each other and their similarities. While Meatball is attempting to gain control of his crazy lease-breaking festivities, Callisto is trying to hide from the world in his hermetically sealed apartment. Callisto sees the world as doomed and subject to suffer from a heat death eventually, and he also sees the media as dismissive of the looming issue:

The cosmologists had predicted an eventual heat-death for the universe (something like Limbo: form and motion abolished, heat-energy identical at every point in it); the meteorologists, day-to-day, staved it off by contradicting with a reassuring array of varied temperatures.

While Callisto is preoccupied with pessimistic thoughts, his bird, and his eminent heat death, Meatball is another apartment in the same building gaining consciousness because of the loud cymbal crash from the music both characters can hear. The chaotic negativity of the air surrounds around them both, and it simmers and waits to be released.

The passage shows that both characters have created their own versions of chaotic uniformity. Meatball is busy making sure that chaos does not break out at his party. He tries to calm any chaos at his party before it happens. He consoles his heartbroken friend and he makes sure a drunken guest does not drown in the bathtub. He does not want the party to end in any fights, so he tries to keep things at bay. The irony of this is that Meatball is the one who is throwing the party, and he has created uniformed chaos in the “synchronized wagging of heads over the wastebasket.” The passage describes a moment in a time of pessimistic black clouds float about, and then they simply melt into the rain outside. Their bleakness blends in with the pessimism that is all around the apartment building, as this passage shows.

Along with pessimism and chaotic uniformity, other themes are evident in this passage that is also present in the larger work. According to Kneis, “the entropy of a physical system measures the degree of disorder in a system. In the long term, Entropy never decreases but continually increases. While entropy is technically a term used in physics, it is used to describe the nature of society. It is also used to describe the negative tension in both apartments of the story as well as this particular passage. It also supports Callisto’s belief that nothing will get better, and things will continually get worse.

The degree of disorder at Meatball’s wild party is contained by Meatball himself. According to the definition of entropy, the chaos at Meatball’s party will not decrease. In fact, if he keeps it up, hell is sure to break out. It is Meatball who is supporting the notion of entropy in this passage and story.

In the story, communication is a subject that is full of ambiguity. The character Saul summarizes the theme of distorted communication with the following quote:

Tell a girl: ‘I love you.’ No trouble with two-thirds of that, it’s a closed circuit. Just you and she. But that nasty four-letter word in the middle, that’s the one you have to look out for. Ambiguity. Redundance. Irrelevance, even. Leakage. All this is noise. Noise screws up your signal, makes for disorganization in the circuit.

The lines above show how the characters regard communication as merely noise that is irrelevant to their lives.

The passage also lets the reader know that the temperature is constant outside and it has been for days, and Callisto worries that this signifies the entropy of the world. He has already noted in the story in that it is a “false spring” in Washington. He also thinks that the soul “is nothing, substantially, but air; it is only natural that warpings in the atmosphere should be recapitulated in those who breathe it.” Callisto paints a dismal portrait of the human spirit and the world around him, supporting the themes of the passage and the entire piece itself.

This passage relates to works by other authors of the same time period because it reflects a modernism that was present in literature of the 1950s. It also has the theme of bleakness which was also quite popular in literature of this time period, such as Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Literature of the 1950s also relied on character development and symbolism as ways to make statements about national identity. “Entropy” has a perspective that is not mainstream in the least, and this is a hallmark of 1950s literature. This passage relates to works by other authors of different time periods because it uses a timeless literary technique of intertwining two main characters that do not know each other, but they exemplify the same themes of the story.

Passage Analysis of Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”

“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa is an essay about her problems with her language and how her language represents her and how others see her. In this feminist writer and theorist’s essay, she expresses her concern with the way Chicanas cannot express themselves freely or with ease because they do not have a single and native language that defines them. Instead, their language is basically a mish-mash of other different languages with incorporations of Spanish. The particular passage from How to Tame a Wild Tongue” symbolizes the themes of the story: identity is perceived through language and the representation of language is connected to one’s identity.

This passage is about Anzaldúa’s frustration with the language that Chicanas speak because it is not true to her identity and what she is about. Even though her Chicana Spanish incorporates the Spanish language, Anzaldúa notes in her essay that Chicanas are not Spanish, nor do they live in a county where Spanish is the first language. Yet the language that Chicanas speak is peppered with Spanish along with several other languages. To the author, this makes their language unforgettable, unimportant, and uncomplimentary of their identity: “On one side of us, we are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the Anglos’ incessant clamoring so that we forget our language.” And forgetting their language gives way to a surrendering of their identity to something bigger which does not represent their culture.

The passage suggests that Anzaldua wishes for a language that allows her people to make a connection through their identity. She wants a language that will let Chicanas communicate their own values and culture through a compromise of languages that form a variation. Instead, she says that “we are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the Anglos’ incessant clamoring so that we forget our language.” She is expressing her frustration that her identity gets completely lost in her native language because it is so ambiguous. This theme is evident in both the passage and the entire story itself.

This passage brings up the theme that identity is perceived through language in the following lines: “Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul—not one of mind, not one of citizenship.” These lines suggest that language is part of who a person is and everything they represent. And their mashed up language suggests that Chicanas do not care about their own culture. The author would like to see this change, and this passage supports that notion.

The theme of language and identity is evident in the passage as well as other parts of the essay. For example, when she states “I am my language,” Anzaldua is stating that criticizing her language is basically putting her down as well. In other words, it affects her identity and makes her want to hide it. On the other hand, she cannot be passionate about her language because she does not feel as though it is embraced by Chicanas or in any other culture.

This passage also sets up the theme of how identity is perceived through language. Since the Chicanos have basically created their own language, they have made themselves subject to a linguistic terrorism of sorts. They are scared to communicate in their language because they think that their Spanish is poor. This uneasiness and apprehensiveness in communication undoubtedly affects their self-esteem. This is because that the author’s linguistic identity is so closely related to their ethnicity and their being. Chicanos cannot take pride in themselves because they cannot take pride in the language that they speak.

This passage relates to works by other authors of the same time period because it has a central theme of identity, which is present in many literary works of the 1950s. According to The Norton Anthology of American Literature, “other novelists were inspired by William Faulkner to use regional specificity to make major statements about race, history, and national identity” during the 1950s. Also, many authors in this time period strove to universalize their language so that they could speak universally to readers. The passage from “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” relates to other works by authors of different time periods because communication and identity issues have been central themes of timeless works of literature for centuries now, and they will continue to do so.

Works Cited

Kneis, Phil John. "Philjohn.com - Papers: Entropy." Phil John. N.p., 1999. Web. 7 Dec. 2013. <http://www.philjohn.com/papers/pjkd_ga09.html>.

"Since 1945: Overview." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. N.p., 2007. Web. 7 Dec. 2013. <http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/naal7/contents/e/welcome.aspl>.