Holocaust

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

One of Pynchon's indirect ways of dealing with the Holocaust is in through
various characters who enact or come to terms with their own anti-Semitism
as expressed in the concept of Jew as Other.

Greta Erdmann, for example, somehow incorporates enough knowledge of Jewish
mysticism to incarnate herself in her own mind as the Shekinah, and comes to
enact the "blood libel," the stories of Jews murdering children for blood to
bake in the Passover matzohs.  On the other hand, Leni Pokler is at first
titillated by the idea of making love to her sister Jewish rebel (Rebecca?)--
of not just making love to a woman but to a Jew--but eventually finds herself
"Judaized" as she confronts the sexism of the movement (not unlike that of
the 1960s left itself).  Of course, she is almost literally "Judaized" by her
internment in the Dora camp.

There may be other examples I can't think of right now.

(Pokler's gift of the ring is an obvious one)

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)