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

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Michael Perez wrote:
> 
> 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?


 I don't think so. This sounds like Hamlet with a twist.
Some say there is no escape. There is no escape in Pynchon's
earlier fiction, right? One of the reasons is that the whole
tribe going into an avenging battle is not an escape from
displacement, but only another Heart of Darkness. If there
is an escape, it is not an avenging battle from any side.
This is, I think one of Pynchon's central questions, one he
keeps asking, story after story, How do you defeat evil,
without
evil?