SOURCE: Muste, John M. “The Mandala in Gravity's Rainbow.” Boundary 2 9, no. 2 (winter 1981): 163-79.

In the following essay, Muste examines the symbolic implications of the mandala in Gravity's Rainbow, illuminating the novel's thematic structure that reflects both the unity and division of the mandala's four segments.

Gravity's Rainbow contains dozens of symbols, many of which announce themselves as having special importance, and of course most of them have. It would be foolhardy to suggest that any one of them is the key to the novel, or even that it has more final significance than some of the others, but despite some interesting recent attempts to find all-embracing explanations for the novel or identifications of its central theme¹ none of these to my knowledge has yet investigated satisfactorily the recurrent symbol of the mandala which is associated with the Hereros and with the Schwarzkommando whose insignia it has become. This...