Pursuit Of Authenticity In The Predicament

Vineland is the fourth full-length novel written by Thomas Ruggles Pynchon.Like Pynchon’s earlier works, this novel continues the theme of “pursuit”. In thisnovel, Pynchon vividly pictures variety of living predicaments encountered bymodern American people in the absurd society. He criticizes bitterly the totalitarianrule of the American government. By analyzing the American youth’s protestingmovements launched against the totalitarian government and mainstream culturevalues in the1960s, this thesis endeavors to explore the existentialist features in thisnovel and the deeper meaning of the text.This thesis consists of three parts. The first part is an introduction aimed tomake clear the creative background of Vineland, the previous study of the novel bothat home and abroad, and the theoretical framework to be used as well as its structure.The second part is the main body of this thesis, which is divided into three chapters.The first chapter deals with a detailed analysis of the exsitential predicaments thatbothered modern Americans in the1960s. The second chapter is devoted to how“free choice”, the most important idea of Sartre’s exsitentialism, embodies itself inthe novel. The third chapter argues that “responsibility”, another key idea in theSartrean existentialism, is the basic principle humans must obey when they make freechoices in their pursuit of authenticity.Through the existentialist analysis of Vineland, it is safely to conclude that infront of various existential predicaments, modern people have to find a new path outof the absurd and disordered social order. In Vineland, Pynchon expresses hishumane concern about the living state of modern people. He points out that onlypersistent free choices and responsible actions can assist people in solving all thedifficulties on the road to authenticity and thus changing the world.