Vladimir Begs The Question: "Are Pynchon's People?"

[Keith]

"The dualism permeating the whole work, evil almost as strong as the  
good, embodied in Chancery, as a kind of Hell, with its emissary  
devils Tulkinghorn and Vholes, and a host of smaller devils, even to  
their clothes, black and shabby. [...] The "good" ones are often  
victims of the "evil" ones, but therein lies the salvation for the  
former, perdition for the latter. All these forces and people in  
conflict (often wrapped in the Chancery theme) are symbols of greater  
more universal forces, even to the death of Krook by fire (self- 
generated), the devil's natural medium. Such conflicts are the  
"skeleton" of the book, but Dickens was too much of an artist to make  
all this obtrusive or obvious. His people are alive, not merely  
clothed ideas or symbols."

   --Nabokov on _Bleak House_ (_Lectures On Literature_, pp. 68-9)