GRGR (15): Good & Evil (was Enzian...)

[rj]

David M:
> Q1.  Is Weissman Evil?
> A1.  Was he evil when he met Enzian way back when?  Was he only preying on 
> the young black child?
> 
> Q2.  What happened, changed, Weissman?  Is he only another son bound by his 
> ancestry?  Was his initial innocence/purity only a genetic shell to be 
> discarded upon crysalilsis?
> A2.  Was he "Evil" way back then?

Yes, these are questions the text leaves the reader with. Unanswered
questions. Or, relativism and ambiguity accrue because there are too
many answers, too many possibilities, crowding in on top of one another,
each one depending on context and perspective for its local "truth".

The Hereros were sold on suicide *before* "the extermination the Germans
began in 1904".(317.6-10) Indeed, young Enzian's "gods had gone away
themselves". But he let Weissmann wallow in his indolent guilt anyway,
this young black "innocent" a manipulative S and M freak already, even
at such a tender age. Lumbered in childhood with his own "Herod-myth"
and Christ-complex (323), almost believing in it himself ("Enzian of
Bleicherode" indeed!), now in the feminine spaces of the Erdschweinhohle
Enzian's blasphemy is actually an embracing of the Christian
mythos.(324.13-19) B-but, is it *only* Enzian who is enunciating such
sacrilege here?

Meanwhile, Slothrop had better watch out for those looting DPs, ex-Dora
prisoners on their light-extinguishing and Bacchanalian
"rampages".(289.27, 296.15, 299.39)

"Good" and "evil"? Yeah, right. Not in this Text, fella.
The only moral compass here is the one in the reader's hand: "There is
time, if you need the comfort, to touch the person next to you, or to
reach between your own cold legs . . . "

best