Fortune’s Wheel

What is it?

The image of Fortune at her Wheel is commonly found in both medieval and early modern literature and visual art. There are many variations, but the common image found in many illuminated manuscripts is of a woman standing next to a great wheel with a crank in her hand, watching as the human subjects placed on the wheel spin as she rotates the wheel. The characters on the wheel range from kings and queens, clergy, to laymen and common peasants. Figures at the top of the wheel sit at the height of fortune. Their clothes are refined, and painted with warm glowing colors. The characters descending towards the bottom of the wheel descend into disparity. The faces of those characters are crumpled with worry or pain. They are clothed in tatters and appear physically deformed. Sometimes demons are depicted at the bottom of the wheel gleefully jabbing at the poor souls with pitchforks. 

As a literary trope, Fortune’s Wheel symbolizes that “the human condition is uncertain” as the wheel itself is unstable (Radding 131). The wheel never stops spinning, so while one figure is at the top at one moment enjoying the warm sunshine of good luck and prosperity, they just as soon will end up the tortured creature at the bottom. It does not matter if that figure is a king or a peasant, Fortune will crank her wheel and all men will experience the joys of the top and the pains of the bottom. Furthermore, what Fortune gives us by moving the wheel to the top, she can just easily strip away. The image and the trope functioned as a memento mori, a continual reminder that all men must fall.

Just as the trope of The Great Chain of Being is present on multiple levels in the novel, Fortune’s Wheel is also  present in a variety of facets of the novel’s narrative arc. Again, war is a useful medium in which to play out another archaic trope. The back and forth of the Axis and Allied sides during WWII symbolize the circular rise and fall of figures on the wheel. Moments of victory in battle are fleeting in comparison to the greater moves of WWII.  The White Visitation celebrates the pinpointing of a rocket landing to then hear of another launch. Characters like Slothrop and Katja deeply feel the instability of the wheel, Slothrop with his paranoia and Katja as a double agent. They can never settle. Just when Slothrop begins to settle into a routine, the lever is turned and he reverts to is paranoid flight from his invisible pursuers. Both Slothrop and Katje have placed bets on one another. They have found a sliver of comfort with each other and a small paradise in the Riviera, “Good mornings of good old lust, early shutters open to the sea, winds coming in with the heavy brushing of the palm leaves, the wheezing break to surface and sun of porpoises out in the harbor” (Pynchon 208). Even though Slothrop has the sense that peace here is tenuous and thinly veiled, “he’d rather be warm here with her than freezing back under the Blitz” and notes to himself that Katje might be “As much a victim as he is” (Pynchon 210). They are aware that something bigger than themselves is in motion, and it is beyond them to stop that inertia. 

The Wheel takes physical form in the scene with Katje and Slothrop in the Riviera. The scene revolves around the image of the roulette wheel in the casino. The setting is one steeped in the belief and veneration of luck. Patrons gamble, and stake their fortunes on the roulette wheel sending their prayers to the indifferent goddess with the crank in her hand. Thousands of dollars can be vaporized like *that* with one spin. When Slothrop reaches out to halt the roulette wheel the focus slides away from the actual result of the spin for “Seeing the number is supposed to be the point. But in the game behind the game, it is not the point” (Pynchon 211). The individual spins mean nothing in comparison to the amount of cash the gambler leaves with at the end of the night. A single win here or loss there is voided by the overall fate of the game. Slothrop knows that the day to day rendezvous with Katje are insignificant to whatever higher and obscured powers at play during the war. She is a double agent. One day she’s on his side and in his bed, and the next she’s against him.

The danger lies in the assumption that we gamblers at the roulette table believe we play the role of Fortune when we pick a color/number and throw a spin, but we are just further figurines on the larger wheel at play. When we thought we are in charge of fate it “is discovered to’ve been under some Control, all the time, the same as a fixed roulette wheel– where only destinations are important, attention is to long-term statistics, not individuals: and where the House always does, of course, keep turning a profit…” (Pynchon 212). The image of Fortune’s Wheel in the novel heightens the crushing feeling of inevitability. Individual blips on the screen or individual narratives are arbitrary in the face of the war machine. Where medieval illuminators depicted the spindly spokes of a 12th century wooden wheel, the wheel of Pynchon’s war is a hulking industrial cog without breaks.