Gravity's Rainbow: Analysis of Major Characters

Author: Thomas Pynchon

First published: 1973

Genre: Novel

Locale: Europe

Plot: Historical realism

Time: The mid-1940's

Tyrone Slothrop, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army toward the end of World War II. Stationed in England, he is sent on a strange mission to locate the staging area both for the V-2 rockets bombarding England and for the prototype of a new rocket, the A4. The A4 is even more destructive than the V-2. The Germans are preparing to launch it in a desperate effort to change the course of the war. Slothrop goes to the French Riviera, to Switzerland, and ultimately to the “Zone,” occupied Germany after the hostilities officially have ended. Slothrop is a naïve young man who is never fully aware of what he is doing. As an infant, he had been experimentally conditioned by a famous behaviorist, and the behaviorist psychologist Ned Pointsman tries to make use of that conditioning for his own purposes. Made aware on the Riviera that he is being manipulated, Slothrop escapes from the surveillance that Pointsman and his masters have arranged and roams around Europe in the chaos of the first months of “peace.” He is still searching for the rocket, and he finds traces of it in many places but never discovers the rocket itself. After numerous strange adventures, he loses whatever it was that made him unique and becomes completely ordinary, seeming simply to disappear.

Captain Weissmann (Blicero), a German officer, the manager of the project to create the A4 rocket. Physically unimpressive, he is a terrifying figure, in love with death and destruction, sadistic in his bisexual love affairs with the African Enzian, the young soldier Gottfried, and the spy, Katje Borgesius. In the final days before the German surrender, he manages to fire the rocket, with Gottfried as its passenger, but as far as is known the rocket never lands. Blicero apparently is killed as the war ends.

Roger Mexico, a British mathematician and officer. He is the spokesman for the importance of chance and indeterminacy in the lives of humans. He is the most human of the characters in his sense of humor, his love for Jessica Swanlake, his determination to counteract the behaviorism of Ned Pointsman, and his willingness to take risks with his own life to try to save Slothrop from the people who are trying to control his life. In the end, he loses Jessica, but he never gives up the struggle against the forces of repression who dominate the world and seek total control of human actions.

Ned Pointsman, a British scientist and exponent of behaviorism. He is the director of a secret facility called the “White Visitation,” where scientists and pseudoscientists are carrying on experiments in psychological and parapsychological warfare that they hope will destroy the Germans'will to fight. A disciple of Pavlov, Pointsman believes that all human behavior can be controlled through conditioning, and he uses Slothrop's early conditioning as a means to direct his actions in the search for the rocket. The failure of Pointsman's efforts to find the rocket using Slothrop dooms his hopes for a Nobel Prize and a knighthood.

Geoffrey “Pirate” Prentice, a captain in the British Army, a secret agent. He has a special talent for living the fantasies of other people, a talent valued by those who direct espionage for the British government. Prentice is in charge of collecting the remains of V-2 rockets fired by the Germans, so that the British can learn as much as possible about the rockets and how to combat their effects. Prentice also directs the activities of the spy Katje Borgesius, who lives with Weissmann so that she can report on his activities. After she escapes to England, and after she has helped seduce Slothrop and warned him of the dangers he faces, she and Prentice both face the reality that in their espionage activities they have killed or caused the deaths of innocent people and therefore cannot hope for redemption of any kind. To atone for their deeds, Prentice and Katje join the Counterforce, a loosely defined group of people who have lived lives like theirs but who now oppose, as much as they can, the forces that have controlled them.

Katje Borgesius, a beautiful Dutch woman who is one of Weissmann's lovers. Later, Pointsman trains her to become part of the pattern that will push Slothrop along in the search for the rocket. On the Riviera, she is Slothrop's lover, performing the role Pointsman has designed, but eventually she gives Slothrop the hint that sends him off on his own journey, outside Pointsman's control. Later, after she and Prentice recognize their guilt, she joins the search for Weissmann and his unit in postwar Germany.

Enzian, a native of Southwest Africa, now chief of the “Zone Hereros,” Africans serving in the German army. He is the son of a Herero woman and a Russian sailor. As a young man, Enzian had been Weissmann's lover when the latter was stationed in Africa. When the Herero tribe was decimated, he and other survivors followed Weissmann to Germany. His people are divided between those who seek tribal suicide and those who seek to return to their homeland. Enzian, caught between the two groups, leads them on a search for rocket parts, hoping that they can construct an A4 in which he will be the sole passenger. It is his hope that this action will give his people a new unity and sense of common values. It is never clear whether they succeed in firing the rocket.

Jessica Swanlake, a British WAAF. She is Roger Mexico's lover in the most romantic relationship in the novel, but she associates their affair with the war and its dangers. When the war comes to an end, she chooses to leave Roger for the Beaver, a pipe-smoking nincompoop who promises her domesticity.

Franz Pokler, a German rocket scientist. He is marginally associated with early attempts to develop rockets in the 1920's. During the war, Weissmann controls Pokler, giving him routine assignments and keeping him in line by allowing him yearly visits from a girl who he says is Pokler's daughter. The girl spends the rest of the year in a concentration camp, and Weissmann's implied threat is that she will be killed if Pokler fails to cooperate with Weissmann's scheme. Weissmann's purpose is to use Pokler to make one small part for the A4 rocket. In the end, having performed his task, Pokler is released; Slothrop meets him living quietly in the ruins of a children's village after the end of the war. His daughter also survives.

Leni Pokler, Franz's wife. A Communist, she leaves Franz when the Nazis come to power and with her daughter winds up in a concentration camp during the war. She reappears after the war, in a brothel visited by Slothrop and Major Marvy.

Tchitcherine, a Soviet espionage agent and the half brother of Enzian. He always has been a maverick in the Soviet intelligence system. During a period of exile in Siberia, he underwent a mystical experience that he never fully understands. He is valuable because he has special perceptions that his superiors think will help him find the super rocket before the Western powers do. His own crusade is to find and kill Enzian, whom he has never seen but for whom he nurses a burning hatred. When they finally meet, they fail to recognize each other because of a spell cast by Tchitcherine's lover, a witch named Geli Tripping.

Duane Marvy, an American major and an agent for American industries that are trying obtain German scientists and technology for their own uses. A cruel slob, Marvy runs into Slothrop on several occasions and tries unsuccessfully to kill him, apparently hating him because Slothrop does not share his brutish appetites. He joins the search for the rocket but is frustrated by Slothrop and Enzian. In the end, a British medical team mistakes him for Slothrop and castrates him, a fate intended for Slothrop.

Geli Tripping, a beautiful and benevolent young German witch. She gives shelter and affection to Slothrop at one stage of his travels through Germany, but her real lover is Tchitcherine, whom she saves from his own obsession.

Seaman Bodine, an American sailor. He helps Slothrop escape from the military police at the German port of Cuxhaven. Later, he and Roger Mexico disrupt a dinner party staged by German and British Fascists at which the two of them are intended to be the main course. Bodine represents a kind of innocent and necessary vulgarity.

Greta Erdmann, a onetime German film star whom Slothrop meets in the ruins of postwar Berlin. She is one of his lovers and takes him with her aboard the Anubis, a ship sailing the Baltic carrying sensualists whose only desire is to avoid responsibility.