“The movies had not prepared him for this Teutonic version here”: The Significance of the Hansel and Gretel Fairy Tale in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow

Abstract

Among the cultural texts used by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) figures a classic fairy tale of “Hansel and Gretel”. It is here that the author initially develops the theme of bad parents and victimized children, a subject elaborated throughout Gravity’s Rainbow. By placing the fairy tale in a broader framework of Teutonic mythology, with its heathen gods and goddesses, Pynchon demonstrates the workings of cultural conditioning not only on individual characters, but also on narratives initially unfit in the dominant culture. The theme of “Hansel and Gretel” refers to one of the central questions of Gravity’s Rainbow as well, that of the possibility of freedom for a culturally conditioned entity, be it an individual or a narrative.