A major theme of Dhalgren is how society uses art, science, and religion to investigate reality; the limits of Wittgenstein, Goedel, and Heisenberg are in force. One of the questions of the novel, "What has happened to Bellona?" receives many answers, each of which says as much about the observer as about the phenomenon he addresses.
Such answers may be contradictory but necessary. The two moons that rise one night, and the name of the city, suggest the scene is laid on Mars; a gigantic sun suggests Mercury; yet most indications suggest Earth, some time in the 1970s. Such pragmatic possibilities, since they are obviously unsatisfactory, generate mythological responses in the characters, in the person writing the journal out of which the novel seems to arise, and finally in the reader, who from the first.....
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