GRGR(5): note on Katje

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, rj wrote:

> 
> But the bottom line as far as I'm concerned is that she, personally, in
> the 'real' life of the historical narrative, consigns "three
> crypto-Jewish" families to the concentration camps in the full knowledge
> that this will result in their deaths. The fact that she "smelled out"
> (like a cat? or a snuffling pig?) the families suggests to me that she
> had to get to know them first in order to discover their "crypto-", or
> hidden, Jewishness. Heinous. On top of this, consciously or
> sub-consciously, she suppresses any knowledge of the Holocaust she has,
> or had, at the time and later on in London; quite completely and
> deliberately so. Der Kinderofen game never recalls the concentration
> camp ovens to her as it automatically does for Blicero, and as it
> certainly does for the reader. It is just so obvious and yet Katje
> refuses to countenance it, despite all the other connections she does
> make. (94.36 - 95.13) Classic guilt-reflex denial imo.
> 
> Katje judges herself pretty harshly, too, I think, without ever
> enunciating it. Certainly, she's human, flawed, a survivor, like all the
> other chars. But, to condemn Blicero or Pointsman and not Katje seems to
> create quite a large ethical dilemma, and it's the envelope Pynchon
> seems to be pushing imo.


That's right, P is simply pushing the envelope. The envelope of war,
which as we all know, in the end, comes down to the buying and
selling of human lives. Even the brave resistance fighter did it. I 
don't know about other p-listers but I reflexively assumed Katje
traded the Jewish lives for other lives the Resistance deemed for the
moment to be more essential to defeating the invaders. That's War.

Historically, WWII was like that. My own continuation was very possibly
bought for me with Hiroshima.

			P.