GRGR(4) - Slothrop's Rape Escape

[Michael Perez]

Max wrote:
"If TRP had gotten into the mind of Slothrop, something we've already
seen him do with other characters, and had Slothrop commenting on his
experience, how he didn't know whether or not he'd been raped; well,
then we would have the possibility that TRP was playing with the
speaker not realizing the full import of what had been happening.  This
form of irony is used a lot in some narrative strategies, like
detective
stories, where the reader knows more than the dramatis personae.  Or if
Slothrop's hallucination were being reported back, once mediated, by
those administering his drugs (Spectro, or Pointsman), and they could
lend some ambiguity to the event: 'Well we can't tell if the kid was
once raped and is now remembering it under the influence, or if that is
merely his fear.'  kinda thing. But Pynchon didn't do either of those
things.  By speaking from the point of view of the third person
omniscient narrator, the author is authoritative.  If he says Slothrop
got out of his menacing situation with his precious virginity (and if
there are no ironic signifiers--indeed, there seem to be confirmers
that he means to be taken literally in the next sentence), I think we
have to take him at his word."

Perhaps we can at least think about the possibility that the narrator
and Pynchon are not necessarily one and the same.  I think I remember
reading one essay or article on _GR_ that made the bold (and, I think,
horribly erroneous) statement that the narrator was the "only character
in the book" or some such nonsense.  Others believe there are multiple
narrators or voices, still others believe the narrator to be some sort
of Protean entity, a kind of narrative shape-shifter.  The latter is
closest to the way I've come to see the narrator problem.  This entity
is not only not always reliable (hencenot, IMHO, "authoritative," as
you say), but very often as clueless as the reader and the characters
about what is going on in a given scene.  Sometimes he (we might agree
at least that whatever or whoever the narrator[s] is/are, it is most
likely a male voice or voices) knows more than the characters,
sometimes less than the readers, but characters about whom he is
speaking have not necessarily revealed everything to him or us.  So,
yes, it is Slothrop commenting, but under Sodium Amytal and through the
narrator, who is reporting what happens in the fantasy, not what may or
may not have happened or been attempted or been feared for real in
1939.


Michael
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