Entropy

Callisto and Aubade keep a close watch on the temperature outside of their apartment, which has remained steady at 37 degrees Fahrenheit for the past few days, even while the weather itself has been erratic: “The day before, it had snowed and the day before that there had been winds of gale force and before that the sun had made the city glitter bright as April, though the calendar read early February” (82). This mixture of stasis and chaos—that is, steady temperatures and unpredictable weather—evokes the concept of entropy that is central to this story, and therefore helps to set the story’s mood. (The story is set in 1957, well before global warming was a widely known phenomenon and unpredictable weather like this was something more than metaphorical.)

In his introduction to Slow Learner, Pynchon states that he chose the outside temperature of 37 degrees in this story because it is the same temperature as that of the human body: “Cute, huh?” (13). He is dramatizing a breakdown of boundaries between his characters and their surroundings—the same breakdown that preoccupies Callisto and Aubade, since 37 degrees is also the temperature in their apartment.