V.: Analysis of Major Characters

Author: Thomas Pynchon

First published: 1963

Genre: Novel

Locale: Italy, France, Egypt, German Southwest Africa, Malta, Virginia, and New York

Plot: Satire

Time: 1898–1956; primarily times of worldwide political crisis

Benny Profane, a former Navy man and self-styled “schlemiel” who wanders purposelessly the streets of New York, Norfolk, and Malta. His chief activity is “yo-yoing” up and down the East Coast between New York and Norfolk. He has no goals and no value system and is incapable of loving or receiving love. Society around him is decaying, and his wandering simply keeps him continuously in motion to minimize the possibility of reaching a point of equilibrium. His last name, Sfacimento, means destruction or decay in Italian.

Herbert Stencil, the son of Sidney Stencil, a British spy who mysteriously lost his life near Malta in 1919. Herbert spends his life obsessively pursuing the mysterious V. He attempts to make some meaningful structure of the facts he obtains about V. as if he were a nonemotional historian. After searching in the sewers of New York, reading his father's diaries, and interviewing people about V., he avoids the possibility of actually succeeding in his quest, because to do so would end the search and leave him susceptible to the process of entropy.

V., a mysterious woman (and perhaps a place or even a fiction) who appears in various guises and in various places around the world, generally at a moment of crisis and upheaval. Some of her appearances are as Victoria Wren, Vera Meroving, Veronica, and the Bad Priest. She becomes increasingly mechanized and dehumanized, being a closed system subject to entropy with its resulting decay and disorder. She represents a dying society, personifying the forces that have sapped modern humankind's vitality and have made the world's people a “Sick Crew.” She also seems to represent Henry Adams' theory of history as a mechanized twentieth century equivalent of Adams' Virgin or Venus.

Victoria Wren, a manifestation of V. as an eighteen-year-old girl in Egypt in 1898. In this guise, her innocence is emphasized, so she is seen as calm and incapable of being aroused by any emotion, as if she embodies some female principle that complements explosive male energy.

Vera Meroving, a woman about forty years old, a manifestation of V. under siege in Africa in 1921. She has a glass eye containing a watch.

Veronica Manganese, a manifestation of V. in Malta in 1919, following the end of World War I. Seen wearing an evening cape and an elaborate bonnet, she has a reputation for being in the company of various revolutionary Italians and for being a wealthy troublemaker.

The Bad Priest, a manifestation of V. in Valletta, Malta, during World War II. Pinned under a falling timber during a bombing raid, she is slowly dismantled by some Maltese children. Because V. has become more and more artificial, the children are able to remove a white wig, false teeth, a glass eye, a star sapphire in her navel, and artificial feet.

Mildred Wren, the stocky, myopic sister of Victoria Wren. Although she is plain, she is good. The sisters symbolize the terrible opposition between beauty and humanity.

Fausto Maijstral (mizh-SHTRAHL), another character who parallels Henry Adams. Both felt themselves moving toward inanimateness, both wrote journals, both recognize the futility of achieving order, and both turn to art in an attempt to save themselves from chaos. He appears in four stages. Fausto Maijstral I, before 1938, is a young man vacillating between politics and the priesthood. Fausto II emerges when his daughter Paola is born. Fausto III was born on the Day of the 13 Raids of Malta during World War II. More than any other character, he approaches being nonhuman, like a stone. Fausto IV represents a level that reveals a slow return to humanity. An Irish Armenian Jew, he claims to be the laziest person in New York.

The Whole Sick Crew, a group that includes such characters as Charisma, Fu, Melvin, Raoul, Winsome, Slab, and sometimes Paola. The “Crew” represents decadence, especially among the younger generation. Purposelessly, they wander from one aimless party to another, indulging in drink and promiscuous sexual relationships.

Hugh Godolphin, an explorer and discoverer of Vheissu, a mysterious polar underworld. Apparently a spy, he had engaged in a polar expedition that had been declared a failure, although he had survived. He is fifty-four years of age when he appears in Florence but is almost eighty in South Africa during a Bondel uprising. He is the father of Evan Godolphin. The two appear to represent God the Father and God the Son, focusing on the perversion and deterioration of religion in the twentieth century.

Evan Godolphin, the son of Hugh Godolphin. He is a British agent and World War I flying ace. As a youth, he was the leader of a nihilistic group called the League of the Red Sunrise. He is now a liaison officer in his middle thirties, sent on temporary duty with the Americans for some reconnaissance missions. On one mission, he lost the top of his nose, part of one cheek, and half his chin. When all the physical attributes and his manner of speaking are brought together, there emerges a picture of a Christ figure, thus showing the kind of decadence and deterioration that religion underwent in the twentieth century.

Rachel Owlglass, a short woman with long red hair that has strands of premature gray. She is a mothering person who, though kind to the Whole Sick Crew, is aloof from its decadence. An association with Rachel in the Bible may be intended. An occasional girlfriend of Benny Profane, she urges him, as a wanderer, to come home. She often pays the way for her roommate, Esther Harvitz, who takes unfair advantage of Rachel's kind nature. At other times, her own decadence comes to the fore.

Esther Harvitz, the twenty-two-year-old roommate of Rachel Owlglass. She has plastic surgery to make her look less Jewish. Half the time, she is in control of her life; at other times, she is portrayed as a “victim” type. She habitually depends on Rachel for financial support and sometimes borrows things without permission.

Paola Hod, née Maijstral, a woman who is separated from her sailor-husband, Pappy Hod. She assumes several identities, including that of a barmaid named Beatrice (possibly to be associated with Beatrice in Dante's The Divine Comedy). She is sometimes associated with the Whole Sick Crew; she appears as Ruby, a black prostitute, and may be one of a number of Puerto Rican girls in the novel. She is the daughter of Elena Ximxi, and, at one point, she seduces Melanie l'Heuremaudit.

Dr. Shale Shoenmaker, an expensive plastic surgeon. He does plastic surgery on Esther Harvitz's nose to lessen her Jewish appearance and also tries to seduce her, emphasizing a trend toward inanimateness and perversion of sex.

Dudley Eigenvalue, a Park Avenue dentist who schedules dental sessions as if there were psychological connections with one's teeth. Ironically, Eigenvalue provides a contrasting figure to Stencil when he points out that the occurrence of cavities in several teeth does not constitute a connection among them, an approach opposite to Stencil's practice of trying to find connections with everything, almost to the point of paranoia.

Hedwig Vogelsang, V.'s sixteen-year-old surrogate sister. She has white-blond, hip-length hair. She is pursued by Mondaugan.

Mafia Winsome, a New York author who preaches a theory of heroic love that reduces love to lust. Her sympathetic characters are white; her villainous or comic characters are African Americans, Jews, and southern European immigrants.

Gouverneur “Rooney” Winsome, a native of North Carolina, one of the Whole Sick Crew. He is the husband of Mafia.

Josefina (Fina) Mendoza, the sister of Angel and Kook. She urges Benny Profane, a sometime friend, to come home and to get a job. She was once something of a spiritual leader to a youth gang known as the Playboys.

Angel Mendoza, the brother of Josefina and Kook. He works under the street in the New York sewers with Geronimo.

DaConho, a Brazilian Zionist restaurant-bar chief at Schlozhauer's Trocadero in New York. He wants to fight Arabs in Israel and keeps a machine gun handy.

Mrs. Beatrice Buffo, the owner of the Sailor's Grave bar. She hosts a “Suck Hour” from eight to nine on payday.

Beatrice, one of the guises of Paola Maijstral. She is a bar-maid in the Sailor's Grave in Norfolk and is “sweetheart” of the destroyer USS Scaffold.

Cesare, a sidekick of Mantissa. He slashes Sandro Botticelli's painting Venus. Sometimes, he thinks of himself as a steamboat and calls out “toot.”

Clayton “Bloody” Chiclitz, a munitions king and president of Yoyodyne, a large defense contracting company that was once the Chiclitz Toy Company.

Geronimo, a friend of Angel, with whom he works in the New York sewers. He likes to “girl-watch.” He is also a friend of Benny.

Melanie l'Heuremaudit (lehr-moh-DAY), a fifteen-year-old dancer whose name means “cursed hour.” She is loved by V. and had a romance with her father. Representing the perversion of sex in modern society, she is killed when she is impaled on a pole while performing a dance.

Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury, an Egyptologist who is wired, representing the increasing mechanization of humanity. He wears a ceramic hawk's head to represent an Egyptian deity.

Father Fairing, a priest, formerly of Malta, now in New York. He preaches Christianity to the sewer rats in Manhattan in the 1930's.

Kurt Mondaugan, a stout, blond engineer at the Yoyodyne plant on Long Island. He had worked in Germany developing weapons and is in South Africa in 1922 working on a project involving atmospheric radio disturbances.

Foppl, a leader in a military effort to put down the Bondel uprising against the Boers in South Africa. He had been with General Lothar von Trotha, who had led a systematic extermination effort against the Hereros and Hottentots in the Great Rebellion of 1904–1907. He held a “siege party.”

Andreas, a Bondel beaten by Foppl, representing one of many kinds of destruction that have contributed to the deterioration of values in the twentieth century.

Mr. Goodfellow, a red-faced Englishman in his forties who is a British agent. He is suspected of being a spy because he looks like a street fighter but attends a consulate party.

Hanne Faherze, a stout, blond, German barmaid described in a Faulknerian manner as possessing a cowlike calm, which is a positive asset in the beer hall, where she is continuously surrounded by drunkenness, prostitution, and general immorality. She is unable to remove a triangular stain from a plate in a Pentecost-like experience. The name “Hanne” may be associated with Hansen's disease (leprosy), whose symptoms of inanimateness, paralysis, and waste parallel those of modern society.

Vernonica, a sewer rat in New York and possibly another manifestation of V. From what Benny Profane has heard, Vernonica was the only one of Father Fairing's parishioners whom the priest believed was worthy of having her soul saved.