Against the Day Title
Note: please keep this analysis general and spoiler-free.
Contents
Painting
David Hockney: "Contre-jour in the French Style - Against the Day dans le style français". Paris 1974. Oil on canvas [1]
Contra Jour
Contra Jour is a photographic term meaning, literally, 'Against the Day' or 'Against the Light'. This seems particularly relevant given that light is a major theme in the book.
Wikipedia has this as contre-jour and that article suggests other reasons for the title. In particular, this technique exaggerates the contrast between light and dark in the picture and emphasises outlines.
Other books of the same title
Against the Day is also the title of a book by Michael Cronin, dealing with an alternate history of World War II.
Biblical connotations
In his review of Against the Day in the Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux (author of Darconville's Cat and the upcoming Laura Warholic; or The Sexual Intellectual) traces the title of Pynchon's novel back to the Bible, 2 Peter 3:7.:
- (5) For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God;
- (6) by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
- (7) but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
- (8) But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
(Source: American Standard Bible)
Theroux's review can be found in The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2006, Page W8. (The website is only accessible for subscribers.)
Romans 2:5
"Against the Day" is a fairly common phrase and probably not limited to one meaning, but this passage from the King James Bible is particularly resonant, especially considering the great amount of religious and pseudo-religious imagery in the book:
The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans 2:5 "But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God" (King James Bible)
The bookends of the word "wrath" around "against the day" make this particularly suggestive of judgement day or the day of wrath. The passages around this one and around Matthew: 6:34 where Webb's "Sufficient unto the day" (p.96) appears dwell on judgement: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. 7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Proverbs 21:31
"The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD" (KJV) is another possibility, considering the novel's ominous context of impending war.
Mormon Sources
The phrase "against the day," which provides the novel's title, appears on page 805 of the U.S. edition, and while it may carry biblical overtones, it perhaps is more directly derived from The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Specifically, Pynchon embeds "against the day" in a larger phrase, "prepare them against the day," which appears in Section 85 of the Doctrine and Covenants, Verse 3: "It is contrary to the will and commandment of God that those who receive not their inheritance by consecration, agreeable to his law, which he has given, that he may tithe his people, to prepare them against the day of vengeance and burning, should have their names enrolled with the people of God."
Section 85 is part of a response by Joseph Smith to one W. W. Phelps "to answer questions about those saints who had moved to Zion, but who had not received their inheritances according to the establish order in the Church."
Doctrine and Covenants, Section 85
Other potential Doctrine and Covenants sources include Section 29, Verse 8 ("the decree hath gone forth from the Father that they shall be gathered in unto one place upon the face of this land, to prepare their hearts and be prepared in all things against the day when tribulation and desolation are sent forth upon the wicked") and Section 109, Verse 46 ("Therefore, O Lord, deliver thy people from the calamity of the wicked; enable thy servants to seal up the law, and bind up the testimony, that they may be prepared against the day of burning").
Doctrine and Covenants, Section 29 and Doctrine and Covenants, Section 109
The themes of the book
The title, Against the Day, contains references to many of the primary themes of the novel: light, opposites, mirror imagery... Travel backward through time is quite literally traveling "against the day"; the idea of such surfaces frequently in the book. The search for eternal life might also be considered a literal struggle "against the day", or the inevitable effects of living through any measured length of time.
Another great writer full of Biblical allusions, William Faulkner, used the phrase in a 1955 speech: “We speak now against the day when our Southern people who will resist to the last these inevitable changes in social relations, will, when they have been forced to accept what they at one time might have accepted with dignity and goodwill, will say, "Why didn't someone tell us this before? Tell us this in time?"
That it is all too late for America, that we the people might feel that we should have been told before, told in time, might describe a Pynchon theme throughout all his work. See The Education of Henry Adams and its relationship to Gravity's Rainbow.
Appearances of "against the day" in other Pynchon works
p. 125
- Mason nods, gazing past the little Harbor, out to Sea. None of his business where Maskelyne goes, or comes, — God let it remain so. The Stars wheel into the blackness of the broken steep Hills guarding the Mouth of the Valley. Fog begins to stir against the Day swelling near. Among the whiten'd Rock Walls of the Houses seethes a great Whisper of living Voice.
p. 683
- [...] till the Moment they must pass over the Crest of the Savage Mountain, does there remain to them, contrary to Reason, against the Day, a measurable chance, to turn, to go back out of no more than Stubbornness, and somehow make all come right [...]
