Knowledge and understanding of the universe is often attempted and seldom achieved. ... On Oedipa's quest for understanding, Pynchon incorporates the themes of a promise of hidden truth, the inability to understand, and the void in order to present his argument. ... Oedipa gains more knowledge, which feeds her obsession, and drives her to continue to find the hidden truth. ... Pynchon creates understanding of the doctor's foolish idea with the analogy "that the unconscious would be like any other room, once the light was let in." ...

• Word Count: 3055
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

The problem of understanding the "religious instant" is closely tied to the concept of reality. ... Oedipa has not come away with a greater sense of understanding but simply with the knowledge that, as the novelist Joseph Heller writes, "something happened." ... If there is a message implicit in the moment, it is deeply shrouded, and the clouds come in to end the moment before anything can be really gained. ...

• Word Count: 2590
• Approx Pages: 10

Coleridge's opinion of the novel suggests that the elements in the gothic novels were not important to its understanding as a romance novel. It might imply his understanding of the world came from a different view point, one of the future. ... He may have felt that in order to gain readership he needed to include some gothic elements, but include them in a way that does not leave the writing mindless. ...

• Word Count: 2803
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

Discussing the "mannerist," or hierarchical, labyrinth that he constructs in his novel, Eco in his "Postscript" says the following about the far more complex understanding of space that William and the readers glimpse at the end of the story: An abstract model of conjecturality is the labyrinth. ...

• Word Count: 4697
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate