GRGR(5) - Slothrop, the New World

[David Morris]

Trying to make sense of any relation between Pointsman's two obsessions:

1.  The V-1/V-2 explosion & sound symmetry.
2.  A possible conditioned hard-on response from a loud sound stimulus.

The two (#1 & #2 above) are apples and oranges: a Pavlovian correlation does
not exist.  The explosion/sound sequence of the V_1/V-2 is NOT relatable to
sound experience/hard-on response because BOTH rockets produce sound.  Both
the V-1 & V-2's arrival would produce a hard-on in Slotrop if his response
to sound being unconditioned beyond the zero was at the heart of the
mechanism.

The obsession (not just Pointy's) w/ the new V-2 is its "unnaturalness"  in
the common man's experience at the time.  It seemed to embody a paradox of
nature.  Nowadays w/ supersonic aircraft being commonplace, this
sound/explosion reversal does not seem so bizarre.  The obsession here is
with the advent of a conscious-shaking new technology.

(85.10)  When Slothrop was discovered [...] like the New World, different
people thought they'd discovered different things.

(85.34)  It's the map that spooks them all.

Slothrop & his Map together are the Rorschach-Blot.  All the fears and hopes
of everyone are projected onto him.  This is what makes him the perfect
sacrifice.  Whether the paradox embodied by Slothrop's Map is actual or
false, He is the focus of EVERYONE's obsessions, the chief obsession in this
context being the advent of V-2 technology into the world.  A-and as we all
know, the V-2 foreshadows, is a stand-in, for the much more earth shaking
bomb technology to come...