Truth, Reality, and Pynchon's V: From Aestheticism to Dissemination

Indeterminacy, along with the traces of the unknown identity V, plays a crucial role in building a new possibility in the narrative V. While the characters search for the single identity of V, Pynchon never lets readers and critics reach any final destination or goal in analyzing the novel. Exploring the multiple possibilities and meanings of life, the characters merely keep traveling and searching, without ever reaching any final conclusion or destination. The journey without ever reaching a final destination equals going beyond the boundary and embracing the margins of various possibilities. It concerns the Others and breaks off the hierarchy of Western metaphysics, which is quite similar to what the theorists of deconstruction seek to do. The search without ever reaching a final destination not only designates the multifarious aspect of truth, but it also suggests the possibility of the multiple meanings of words that the characters create. Just as their stories are abundant, the meaning that they produce with their stories can be open-ended. The notion of indeterminacy and broadness in this text, which can be well explained by Derrida, makes it possible for one to search for something other than the fixed meanings or truth claims. The text becomes multifarious in meaning as well as in structure, thus rejecting any kind of singular signifying act.