The Amazing Shrinking Hero

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Skip observes:
"It might be interesting to trace what changes, if any, we                
can see in Slothrop that could lead to his eventual breaking-apart.
"Once upon a time Slothrop cared."  (also p. 21)  Cared about what?  What
happened?  The rockets started, for one thing, screwing up our
perceptions of how time should behave.  Is this somehow analogous to
technology's radical compression of time during this century --
everything happens NOW. ??  I dunno . . . just some random thoughts on a
nice, crisp fall morning . . ."


I'd suggest that there's a parallel between TS and Oedipa.  Oedipa discovers
her world falling apart as, one by one, the people (all men, you'll note)
in her life disappear and as she knots into the paranoic complexity of what
may or may not be the Tristero.  She's still there to the end, though.  
Slothrop intensifies the process.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)