Luddism In Bleeding Edge

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Thus, one of the miraculous technologies is DeepArcher, which is a huge part of Bleeding Edge’s storyworld. When searching for clues about Ice’s fraud, Maxine discovers DeepArcher, a sphere of the Deep Web that is a spin-off of what is called Dark Web in our world. DeepArcher is an untraceable programme designed by Maxine’s friends Lucas and Justin, when everything was still going well in America, to serve as an escapist environment that is only accessible with a code. When, as a reader, we first encounter DeepArcher, it is portrayed as a place of mystique, awe and admiration, giving people a pleasurable feeling of transcendence (Herman 33). Staes mentions in his article, which addresses Luddism in relation to time, that this is a feeling of …show more content…

When comparing Pynchon’s essays “Is It OK To Be A Luddite” and “The Road to 1984” to the novel, I found remnants of Luddism in Bleeding Edge. Although the novel seemingly bears down on a dystopian view of a capitalist world where surveillance is important, I discussed that Pynchon’s Luddism is not that delineated. In my opinion, Pynchon uses Luddism strategies to give us a bigger picture: we need to find a way to live with the evolving technology and evaluate its influence on our lives because if we let it out of control, you get a situation as represented in the novel. In order to do this, Pynchon balances certain elements in his text. I discussed the dichotomy between freedom from the government and paranoia for the government. Some characters, such as Ernie and March, are paranoids while Maxine tries to see the good of the government and capitalist consumer society. Besides, the narrator gives us various hints towards both paranoia and freedom. Furthermore, I discussed the Technological Sublime in so far it depicts the real, presented through the family life of Maxine, versus the unreal, mostly represented in DeepArcher. The novel reads as capitalism versus the “Unimaginable Other” (Jarvis) of capitalism. By opposing these elements, a revelation fails to present itself at the end of the book which leaves the readers to make up their own truth about the story. However, I concede that after 9/11 and the Snowden affair, America’s mentality has changed towards the Internet and the government. It now seems like they are searching for negative elements rather than positive ones. Still, I believe the book can be read in the same way: that we need to find a way to live with technology in order to prevent losing control, if we have not

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