View The Western Society From The Perspective Of "Entropy"

Thomas Pynchon (1937-) is one of American postmodernist writers. His novel, The Crying of Lot 49, depicts a bizarre story in which the protagonist, Oedipa Mass, quests the truth of the mysterious legacy of Pierce Inverarity, a California real-estate mogul.Through such a story Pynchon expresses his basic views of the postmodern society. In the highly materialized human world, man is gettinging more and more spiritually bankrupt. They suffered from the loss of faith, the loss of self, which brings them into entropic state. The Crying of Lot 49 is deliberately complex and its plot is difficult to follow, but it is unique and original in arts and structure, profound in meaning and thought-provoking. This dissertation believes that the novel is of characteristic postmodernity.From the thematic point of view, Pynchon has his own insights into society, life and things. His novel contains the theme of "entropy". What he desires to reflect is that in spite of highly developed scientific and physical world, human spiritual world has become increasingly entropic in the post-industrial society. His description that human society has lost its traditional cultural values; that its spiritual world is in chaotic and paranoid state; that communication between man or between man and society was cut off because of information ambiguity, multi-meaning and indeterminacy; that society and human beings have moved into a state of entropy; exposes the reality that people have lost their personality and been alienated in the contemporary western society, which is heading towards chaos and death.Judging from the overall artistic features, Pynchon skillfully draws on a number of post-modern techniques. The novel, The Crying of Lot 49, presents a characteristic postmodern style. It's "uncertainty" creates the postmodern aesthetic language counteracting the entropic state of of literature. It's "openness" gives the postmodern art a more extensive perspective. It's unique absurdity of "black humor" better highlights the characteristics of postmodernism.From the perspective of the specific artistic techniques, this dissertation assumes that in order to present the theme of "entropy" in his novel, Pynchon employs a number of postmodern artistic techniques to expose various social problems and perplexed state of human beings in the post-industrial society. By employing these techniques, he gives an artistic inprepretation of life rather than simply imitating it. He adopts metaphor, symbolism, parody, collage and other creative techniques, along with the "quest narrative" mode to frame all the things. Pynchon's purpose of creating the novel is to enlarge the sick and entropic state of human beings before the readers, thus giving rise to their alert and action to save the human world. It is his ingenious innovation that makes his novel an outstanding masterpiece in the postmodern art world.