Parody of Modernist Search for Order in V.

Abstract

Thomas Pynchon has very craftily parodized the modernist/new critical aesthetic premises to dramatize the postmodern condition of disorder in his novel V. The sense of higher order, which the modernist writers tried to seek in their literary works, is just an illusion because the disorder acknowledged by each individual is the reality of our existence. The two contrasting protagonists in the novel are presented to prove this fact. Benny Profane is presented to parodize Herbert Stencil. Herbert Stencil searches for higher order in the disordered world whereas Benny Profane takes the disorder as the reality of human existence. The sense of multiplicity, disorder, meaninglessness have been presented in the novel V.in such away that these concepts parodize the modernist aesthetic conventions including the search for order. This parody is made in total exaggeration and brutal form. This technique of parodying the modernist/new critical concept of order gives the glimpse that almost every form of order is impossible though the people become nostalgic in search of it. The disorder, presented throughout the novel, is the reality of every individual.