Callisto

I've been wondering why Pynchon chose the same 'Callisto' for one of his protagonists.  From what I could remember on my own (and then looked up to confirm) Callisto was a woman who, after being tricked by Zeus, was turned into a bear for getting pregnant, and gave birth to her son (Arcas).  Years later her son was hunting and came upon the bear, not knowing her to be his mother, he almost killed the bear but just before he could Zeus intervened and made them both into the constellations of Ursa Minor and Major.
Applying this to "entropy", where the amount of heat causes the system to lose useful energy, we see the connection.  There is a lead up to something big and then the momentum doesn't stop itself, it just ends, it is cut off.  Aubade suddenly breaks the glass open with her hands, she's allowing the heat from inside to escape and the cold air outside to enter.  We don't know what this will bring the two characters, but the death of the bird and Aubade's sudden action after so much stagnation leads us to believe that it will change the course of things.  We as readers just have no idea what it will be, for the action ends.  Arcas never kills his mother but is forever in the motion of doing so, he is immortalized in the stars as "the little bear".  While he was born human, he will for eternity be the son of a bear, the child of a raped and mistreated woman, and always about to kill her.
Does Arcas seem like a better name for Pynchon's Callisto?  After all, he has the least action in Entropy, and is what cause's Aubade's pain and (seemingly) momentary lack of senses.  She is the catalyst, whereas Callisto just is.  Aubade is the one being taking advantage of, being stuck in this room taking notes with a man so caught up in his own thoughts; like Zeus using Callisto to satisfy himself. Our Callisto seems to have a lack of energy, heat, and action right from the beginning, Aubade never loses hers.  

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Entropy

This weeks story, Entropy, by Thomas Pynchon was very difficult for me to understand.  There is so much going on throughout the story.  One theme that was constant was that of chaos and order.  In Meatball Mulligan's apartment is the chaos of the party.  There is Duke, Vincent, Krinkles and Paco listening to music another group are in the kitchen playing a game a woman in the bathroom sink, passed out.  Then Saul comes in through the window.  Meatball has utter chaos that he has to deal with, "So he decided to try and keep his lease-breaking party from deteriorating into total chaos:..." (Pynchon 3031) And he sets about doing that. The feeling I get, even in the midst of all the chaos and noise of the party, is dynamic and vibrant and alive.  The direct contrast is the apartment above which is Callisto and Aubade's , "Hermetically sealed, it was a tiny enclave of regularity in the city's chaos,..." (Pynchon 3023).  They are so integral to the world they have created they can no longer leave it.  Both of them live in the past and have ceased to create anything new.  Callisto "envisioned a heatdeath for his culture in which ideas, like heat-energy, would no longer be transferred, since each point in it would ultimately have the same quantity of energy; and intellectual motion would,accordingly, cease." (Pynchon 3026)  Callisto seems to be at that point where his world is coming to an end.  He is trapped in the past instead of living in the present and being part of world around him.  Callisto has created his own "heatdeath" by sealing himself off and not being apart of the energy and noise and chaos in the world.

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