GRGR Continues

[David Morris]

>From: "Clare Kennedy"
>>>>From: "David Morris
>>>>
>>>>I think there are parallels/mirrors going on with the four "Sons":
>>>>Slothrop, Enzian, Tchitcherine, and Gottfried.  I don't think linking 
>>>>their
>>>>Mothers will be productive, except in the general sense of "Motherhood."
>>>>The Fathers can be more directly compared as agents of the War:
>>
>>The character of Penelope appears out of the blue, the scene having segued 
>>from the Hansel & Gretel puppet show via a bomb-drop and then an audience 
>>sing-along led by Gretel.  The last two lines of the song:
>>----------
>>(175.43)  And those voices you hear, Boy and Girl of the Year,
>>Are of children who are learning to die....
>>----------
>>THEN appears an abstraction, a lesson, Penelope and her revelation about 
>>the War's conditioning (children learning to die), fathers leaving, 
>>voluntarily, not taken.  Of course the War conditions both sexes, as is 
>>evidenced in Jessica's "catching" the War.  The ghost who returns to 
>>Penelope is not her father, it is the demon, War, who wants to possess 
>>her.Roger has had this revelation, and I he now sees the world clearly 
>>than ever.
>
>Parallel mirrors? Can you explain this, sounds wonderful, but I'm not sure 
>if I get it?
>

Parallels would be characters who "map" onto each other in like manner.  
Mirrors would be opposite images, maybe complementary, or maybe 
positive/negative.  I haven't got a road map for the "sons" if that's what 
you're asking for.

>OK, let's put one foot infront of the other here. I said:
>[1.] I don't get this quote about fathers. Isn't this penelope?
>
>[2.] In Gravity's Rainbow [] it is often difficult to determine to whom we 
>should attribute what, so we must be very careful to figure out who is 
>saying what, which narrator, which character.
>
>[3.] OK, the fathers are more the agents of war, but Penelope waits for her 
>husband to
>return, in this case her father because Tom is playing another nasty 
>freudian joke here,
>remember, her father is now a ghost--a shell.
>
>"I don't want you. You're not him. I don't know who you are but you're not 
>my father. Go away." Penelope says it's not her father. Is that the end of 
>it? Not by a long pony ride.
>
>"Is this really Keith, her father? taken when she was half her present 
>age...only a shell (a shell?)...souls unwillingly become the demons 
>known...Western magic as the Qlippoth, shells of the dead...Mothers and 
>fathers are conditioned into deliberately dying in certain preferred 
>ways...but fathers only leave--fathers covering for eachother..." pg.176
>
>And Penelope's father returns as the narraor, after the Freudian Edwin 
>Treacle, says, "Europe in the last weary stages of its perversion of magic 
>lost, had incarnated real and living men, likely (according to the best 
>intelligence) in possession of real and living weapons, as the dead father 
>who never slept with you, Penelope, returns night after night to your bed, 
>trying to snuggle in behind you...or as your unborn child wakes you, crying 
>in the night and you feel its ghost-lips at your breast...they are real, 
>they are living..."
>pg.276-277
>

You've "said" alot of things above, including not getting the quote about 
the fathers.  Do you have a point?  Or a question?  I sure don't get what 
you're getting at.

>>>
>>>This is Roger's wish. Sorry Rog old boy, you can't both be new.
>>>
>>
>>Maybe not with Jessica, he can't, but the possibility of such a newness 
>>has been laid on the table in a very strong way.  Jessica here has shown 
>>both its possibility and the strength of the War in resisting such 
>>ventures.
>>
>>David Morris
>
>Jessica or Roger? I can't make out what you are saying here David?

Jessica or Roger WHAT?  We must be speaking different languages which only 
look the same.

One more try: Jessica has been a catalyst for Roger's revelation about the 
true nature of the War and the possibility of creating a new world apart 
from the War, to escape gravity, if you will.  Isn't it interesting, given 
TRP's first title for this book, that Roger champions "love, dreams, the 
spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found among 
the idle and mindless hours of the day...."(177.5).  Jessica comes close to 
this point, but falls short:  "but on the way home tonight, you wished you'd 
picked him up, held him a bit.  Just held him, very close to your heart, his 
cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep.  As if it were you who 
could, somehow, save him.  For the moment not caring who you're supposed to 
be registered as.  For the moment anyway, no longer who the Caesars say you 
are." (135.40) But Jessica doesn't do it, and she falls back into the War.

>Thanks for the quotes on Roger, I'll have to give this more thought, but I 
>don't think, at the moment anyway, that Jessica resists the war or that she 
>represents a viable counter to Katje and the war, but Roger, I think, 
>offers a counter to the fool, Slothrop, on the romantic side.



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