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

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

rj wrote:
> 
> TF
> > The moral messages are often in conflict, but how are they
> > dependent on local context and individual perspective for a
> > particular truth?
> 
> If you're Slothrop, say, then the Dora prisoners and Marvy's Mothers
> pose just as much a threat -- are just as potentially "evil", or morally
> in the wrong -- as the Nazis. What the Nazis did to the prisoners in
> Dora is morally wrong but what the liberated prisoners have done to the
> little girl is also morally wrong.
> 

Yes. The point it seems to me, is not that the prisoners are
angels--excepting those liberated in the spirit by the
Americans. No, they are human, very human. Being human they
are capable of evil and when they commit evil acts, these
acts are not less evil for their having been prisoners. GR,
following Conrad for example, does not deny, in fact it
warns against the denial that those that are slaughtered
like sheep are capable of slaughter. Also, I think the
reader must distance himself from Slothrop to make any sense
of the novel. 

 


> > For example, the abuse of the African's by the white
> > colonialists (though black in humor and twisted in ironies),
> > depicts a moral truth, accepted and agreed upon by all.
> > There is no room for moral ambiguities here. What the whites
> > do to the Africans can not be justified.
> 
> "All" who? Enzian can certainly accept: "*We make Ndjambi Karunga now
> omahuna*" -- It isn't a request or a command, it's a simple statement of
> what will be, what is.

But we all know, the narrator knows, and Pynchon makes it
clear as a bell, humans have certain human rights and to
violate these, is evil. 


> 
> > If we deal with
> > this example, say with David M's fine suggestion that we
> > apply moral judgments to specific context (pragmatism or
> > neo-pragmatism), it is clear that the actions of the white
> > colonialists are evil.
> 
> What about the Rhenish Missionary society? Were they evil too? They were
> certainly first on the scene, weren't they?

They were not all evil, some of them were, some Bliceros and
Pointsmans no doubt, but what they did, and what
missionaries have done to others, even in the name of
christ, has often been very evil indeed.  


> 
> > Introducing other examples only
> > defeats the pragmatic approach.
> 
> But the examples don't exist in isolation in the first place. And who is
> the judge who can stand outside it all in the guise of an omniscient
> divinity and determine the grades and sequences of "evil"? Do you
> presume to such objectivity? I don't believe Pynchon does.


My point is that we can always say, yes well the Nazis were
not as evil as the such and such people or what happened to
the Africans happened in America or Roger is not so innocent
so Pointy is not really evil, but Pointy is an evil bastard
and nothing about Roger changes that. What is one good thing
about Pointsman? 


> 
> > Where do you get this from? This would be a very profound
> > statement if it is true and can be supported by the text.
> 
> I get it from reading the novel. Are you saying that it isn't true and
> that it isn't supported by the text? If so, then the onus of textual
> rebuttal falls to you, I believe.

I have to rebut the argument you claim but haven't made? 

> 
> > Does Pynchon or GR carry this major theme--that individual
> > perceptions are limited and preconditioned?
> 
> Slothrop? Pointsman? Jamf? Pavlov? The Baby Jesus Con Game? Hullo?!

OK, maybe I misunderstood. What is the difference between
conditioned and PRE-conditioned? 



> 
> > Does the novel
> > or Pynchon somehow confirm that this applies to the reader?
> 
> Yes. The last page of the novel, for instance, communicates explicitly
> and directly with the current reader.
> 
> best


And isn't that last page, where the reader is is sitting in
that theater a warning, a warning to America in particular?
Isn't GR an attack on the West? Isn't the Western World,
more specifically 500 years of Western dominance the target
of Pynchon's satire?