GRGR (15): Enzian, nihilism, and a few other things

[Michael Perez]

Terrance wrote:
"Who is Enzian?  What is he up to?  How did he get these ideas?  How is
[he] different from the holy woman in the earth?  Everyone is GR has
some relation to 'the Rocket'. . . 'The Rocket' may be an alternative,
perhaps the antithesis, of that woman in the earth."

Jeremy wrote:
"But Enzian's troubles are still European in origin, aren't they,
because he 'grew up into a white-occupied world.  Captivity, sudden
death, one-way departures where the ordinary things of every day.' 
White occupation is a product of European expansionism which is fueled
by science, maybe."

Terrance later wrote:
"In the world of Blicero things get to be flipping and flopping and one
can almost begin to think the narrator is stopping and Blicero is
taking over the tale."

In yet another post, Terrance wrote:
"The will to death, the Love of the Rocket is not a Western thing, a
christian thing, no, it has spread to others, like the Otukungurua, the
Empty Ones, as well.  How did this happen?  The Zone-Hereros, remember
that Mondaugen came in with the wind earlier in the book, have been
subjected to the common indignity visited upon a people by another
people, tourists usually, tourists and voyeurs that conquer."

All of these comments (and what Doug had to say in his recent posts
about "moral economy") speak to the plight of displaced people.  GR, it
seems to me, is almost nothing but displaced people.  Indigenous people
in colonial bondage are displaced in their own land.  Emigrants are
strangers in another culture and can't create a home away from home,
neither can they assimilate the culture of their new home - their
"souls" (insert suitable personal term here) are too far away to rest,
their magic (like the woman in the earth) will not work here.  The
colonial transplanted magic does not work in either place, but the
damage has been done to those like Enzian who learn enough to be
totally confused.  Within his psyche is deposited the fear of two
cultures, neither of which he is a member.  In more ways than one he is
Otyikondo.  Remember what is said of him when we were first introduced
to him:  
"The Herero boy, long tormented by missionaries into a fear of
Christian sins, jackel ghosts, potent European strand-wolves, pursuing
him, seeking to feed on his soul, the precious worm that lived along
his backbone, now tried to cage his old gods, snare them in words, give
them away, savage, paralyzed, to this scholarly white
[Weissmann/Blicero/omuhona] who seemed so in love with language."
[99.26-31]
The different views of death that lead to being sold on suicide results
in considerable torment for Enzian particularly, being still a product
of two worlds.  Weisenburger points out that Pynchon's probable source
for Herero info, Luttig, explains that the tribal suicide may be an act
of "blood vengeance."  
"'A person who commits suicide under these circumstances is also
actuated by the thought that the dead are capable of bringing about
evil and death more effectively than the living.'  If so, imagine the
whole tribe going into an avenging battle from the Other Side." [SW, p.
162]
Is this a way of finally escaping displacement?



Michael

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