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

[Michael Perez]

Doug wrote:
"Don't forget -- in all this talk of moral relativism and an inability
to find Good and Evil in GR that don't dissolve beneath successive
deconstructions -- that at the heart of this novel, at its very center,
Pynchon has placed Pokler's tale and the relevations of how the Evil of
the Holocaust serves the development of the Rocket and all the Evil
that the Rocket serves, sustains, makes possible. I challenge anybody
to
successfully make the case that Pynchon treats the Holocaust, in GR, in
any sort of relativistic way -- to the contrary, how anybody can read
through Pokler's story and come away without a clear picture of what is
good (Nature, for starters; the sanctity of individual human lives; &
more) and what is evil (destroying Nature's cycle of eternal
return/rebirth, for starters) is beyond me."

This is still something that is brought with the reader as a
preconceived notion.  Of course, almost no one will attempt to justify
the Holocaust and I certainly will not.  Pynchon's portrayal of it does
not challenge our view of it as evil either, but he did wait until this
point, with all of the "moral relativism" having preceded it, to take
us into this world.  As rj mentions, after Dora was liberated, the
former inmates did not act out of goodness.  Pynchon tells us this
twice, before Pokler's tale.  Does this place some ambiguity in the
mind of the reader?  Certainly not for long, but still . . .  As for
your invocations of Nature, is "the sanctity of individual lives"
natural?  Is there such a thing as "Nature's cycle of eternal
return/rebirth"?  Are these things uniquely human?  If so, why?  Humans
are the only animals that think about such things.  I'm not saying this
is a bad thing, but it is not natural.  There are no evil lions or
squirrels, but they do things that humans consider evil.

Michael


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