GRGR(14) - Light & Dark (long)

[David Morris]

>From: JL
>
>303.3 : ' Lakes of light, portages of darkness. '
>  You could drown in the one while the other is a means of escape,
>or perhaps entry.  More on Light & Dark later.

(Sorry if this is preempting you, JL.  Just taking a stab at this difficult 
symbolism.)

Under the mountain, images of light and dark predominate.  The typical 
safety zones in the passage above are reversed.  Light, for us is normally 
safety.  Darkness usually instills fear.  Under the mountain the opposite is 
true.
----------
(299.25)  As darkness is mined  and transported from place to place like 
marble,  so the light bulb is the chisel that delivers it from its inertia 
and has become one of the great secret ikons of  the Humility, the 
multitudes who are passed over by God and History.  When the Dora prisoners 
went on their rampage, the light bulbs in the rocket works were the first to 
go:  before food […] these breakable, socketless  ([…] -so, motherless too) 
images were what the “liberated” had to take….
----------
Darkness is a valuable commodity in this world, just as light is valuable in 
ours.  Light here below the mountain may be seen as energy spent to for the 
sake of collecting darkness, burning light who’s end  purpose is darkness.  
Death's perspective here: waiting for the burn-out of life.

The “liberated” at Dora, the survivors, here called the Humility are the 
passed over by God & History.  This pairing of God & History makes them 
synonymous.  Nobody, neither God nor man gives an F about these people.  The 
prisoners know their lives are as fragile and expendable as those light 
bulbs.  So they “liberate” these bulbs.  They must be kept from burning, 
preserved in the darkness.

One other note about this passage:  "As darkness is mined" recalls an 
earlier passage w/ the Loonies on Leave.  "Many are wearing sunglasses with 
black lenses and white rims, not so much to be fashionable as to suggest 
snow-blindness, the antisceptic white of the Clinic, perhaps even the 
darkness of the mind." (259.15)

Again here is the implication of white light causing burnout, of the eyes, 
and even the mind.  The source of that light here is "snow" (the place of 
death) and the "Clinic" (that place where something was done to baby 
Tyrone).  For Slothrop this white light brings foreboding because it is 
connected with the Forbidden Wing.  Further, that "Lightning Latch" comes to 
mind "the door that opens you."  Didn't somebody mention LSD in baby 
Tyrone's formula?

Here's where Tyrone almost makes it all connect, on that gnome-train ride:
----------
(311.40)  For a minute or two nobody in here can see.  There is only the 
hurtling on, through amazing perfect whitenesss.  Whiteness without heat, 
and blind inertia:  Slothrop feels a terrible _familiarity_ here, a center 
he has been skirting, avoiding as long as he can remember - never has he 
been as close as now to the true momentum of his time:  faces and facts that 
have crowded his indenture to the Rocket, camouflage and distraction fall 
away for the white moment, the vain and blind tugging at his sleeve _it's 
important_..._please_..._look at us_...
----------

Whatever happened to Slothrop back then must have involved a bright blinding 
light: "whiteness without heat."  Light is not usually without heat.  Could 
the special insulation of Impolex-G be involved with this light?  Is 
Impolex-G transparent?

"Blind inertia" also recalls the light bulb chiselling darkness from its 
inertia....

Hmmm.
David Morris


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