| This thesis takes up two novels written by Thomas Pynchon, and attempts gain a better understanding of how these two novels pose, reframe and resolve questions concerning existence in a postmodern era. Characterized by a loss of tangible meaning, uncertainty, and ever-increasing variability, the postmodern period has forced artists to define large philosophical concepts such as being, knowledge, and understanding without the sensibilities which grounded bygone eras. Mason & Dixon and Against the Day, both novels by Thomas Pynchon, take up the question of being in an uncertain time, and offers a reconceptualization of the political responsiblities of the individual in the postmodern era. |
