Entropy and the Inanimate Pynchon as a Socio Apocolyptic Author
... This idea of predicted decay is the second law of thermodynamics, a law of the universe, the law of entropy, or “the degradation of matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity”(Abernethy, “Entropy in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49”). Thomas Pynchon uses the concept of entropy within his novels to illustrate the path, which our society and each of our respective persons is destined to take, the path of collapse and chaos. ... In Pynchon’s first novel V., the prevalence of order’s corruption is portrayed with the slow transformation of each character presented into an inanimate form in which their emotions have been abandoned and their connections to the world have been severed by their own indifference. ... His progression into true inertness and dehumanization comes when he decides to identify more and more with the dead and the inanimate as if it were his only choice, as if there were no place for him in the world of the living. ... His search represents the search of modern Man, the hunt “for an escape from the self” (Golden, “Mass Man and Modernism: Violence in Pynchon’s V. ... The advancement of society and the contemporary world in the direction of entropy is expressed once more in Pynchon’s later novel The Crying of Lot 49 where chaos is illustrated not in the emotional degeneration of the characters as in V. ... and The Crying of Lot 49, reflect a society which Pynchon sees as moving willingly and obliviously in the direction of apocalypse, not because of some inherent error of the society itself, but due to the natural progression of the universe. Despite how mankind may try and deny or avoid this fate, human society will find itself growing further inanimate and each of its populace destined for the same lifelessness.