Pirate's Gift/dream theory

[LOT64 at aol.com]

In a message dated 95-05-28 21:03:50 EDT, you write:

>I'm coming to believe that there is very little accident or
>happenstance in
>Pynchon's work.  Coincidence, yes: in the purest meaning of the word,
>coincidence can be deliberate.  Not to dredge up the chaos-fractal
>thing
>again, but Pynchon's universe seems to be one where an incident
>examined
>alone seems accident, but when examined in relation to the whole it
>seems
>not accident.  I'm just starting Complexity, by M. Waldrop, and it's
>giving
>me ideas...

Cal,
I think you're making an important point about the strategy Pynchon uses in
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW.  There is such a complex web of repetitions of motifs,
taking a very long -shot type view of a scene, and then zooming in to closely
examine a seemingly unimportant bit of minutiae, and then turning into an
emblem of a crucial theme.
In rerereading GR, I am continually being struck by the incredible journeys
of digression where the least little inanimate object suddenly acquires a
point of view that sheds a whole new light on the subject that was the
starting point of the digression.

For example, when (p.107 Viking) Pirate, Osbie, and Katje are discussing
where she can go after her recent exfiltration from the "house in the
forest"the scene shifts to her 17th century ancestor Frans Van der Groov
hunting dodos.  Then, as if in extreme close-up, Pynchon cuts to the fuse of
Van der Groov's matchlock.  "Hemp gripped in the teeth of the steel snake,
ready to be lit, ready to descend, sun to black-powder sea, and destroy the
infant, egg of light into egg of darkness, within its first minute of amazed
vision, of wet down stirred by these southeast trades..."  He goes on to talk
about the weapon making an axis between himself and the  victim.  This image
of an axis is used describing Gottfried (the Rome-Berlin Axis) and a number
of other times in the book.  The rocket is also seen as an axis between the
launchers and Slothrop.  Then the matchlock musket is rhymed with Pirate's
Mendoza.  Much like the Hansel and Gretel scene between Katje, Blicero, and
Gottfried is echoed by the puppet show watched by Roger and Jessica.

There is also the digression into the childhood of the Jamaican counter-tenor
in the choir that Roger and Jessica listen to the evening of Advent.  Pynchon
focuses on the micro image of the equivalent of a screen extra in a film to
make the point about the "acts of minor surrealism...the Empire commits by
the thousands every day..."
There are many many more examples, its too late to go into them all.

Does this trope or micro-metaphor have a specific name in rhetoric?  My
classroom memories of this are hazy. Help me out if you know.

                                      Ron Churgin