Blicero

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Blicero, like other characters in Pynchon is invested with
ideas and characters from literature--Rilke's poetry and
Conrad's Kurtz are two prominent examples. Like Conrad's
Kurtz, Blicero participates in ritual. Unlike Kurtz, whose
rituals are literally "unspeakable rites," Blicero's rituals
are given direct narrative and Blicero articulates his
insane rationalization of these rites. He is in Romantic
love with  death and extinction and in the novel he convenes
a sadistic routine against the War, in the end he seeks the
perverse solace of a "Deathkingdom," because his utter
contempt for Life is so powerful--like Milton's Satan when
he beholds Adam and Eve in Paradise--that he can only regard
life as "this cycle of infection (powerful theme in V.) and
Death," He wants literally to be "taken in love," but his
idea of Love is a mockery and a Reversal of what that term
means in the novel, and I think what that term, might
credibly imply. Blicero desires the Finality of Death, a
perverse solipsistic apocalypse. He is "the Zones worst
spectre." He is described by Polker as "diabolical." He is
the ultimate bureaucrat and the bureaucracy is death
institutionalized. 

more to come