Fidel & Cuba

[David Casseres]

Greg sez
>All this discussion of noble revolutionaries & fascist, entrenched dictators
>brings to mind an interesting bit of CONVENTIONAL WISDOM, as represented in
>literature, movies, and the minds of the Great Unwashed (of which I am a
>charter member & past chapter president):  the fact that the noblest, most
>righteous revolutionaries, no matter how pure their motives, will, upon the
>achievement of their goal, sooner or later BECOME the evil power they 
>displaced.

This doesn't necessarily happen until several generations later, though.  
The U.S. in the 20th Century (and part of the 19th) is arguably the moral 
equivalent of Hanoverian England, but Washington, Jefferson, et al. 
surely were not; nor were the U.S. governments up to, oh, say the Mexican 
War or so.

>These two forces are generally represented in TRP's novels as WE (the
>grunts, the feebs, the counterforce) and THEY (near-absolute power, in all
>it's forms, striving constantly to maintain & enlarge itself).  What I find
>interesting is that I cannot, for the life of me, think of any examples of
>characters in any of his novels who have CHANGED STATE from counterforce to
>power-establishment (mildly evocative of the medieval society, where if
>you're born a peasant, you stay a peasant;  if you're born royalty, you
>remain royalty).
>Pynchon's characters DO go through changes (animate to inanimate comes to
>mind);  but can anybody give me an example of a character who ascends to
>power through "revolutionary" means & is or is not corrupted?

I can't.  I think Pynchon might actually disagree with your thesis more 
strongly than I do.


Cheers,
David