GRGR(25) - The Grace of Pigs

[Terrance]

What Franz Van der Groov is to Katje, William Slothrop is to
Tyrone, Old Tchitcherine is to his son; pigs are to Puritans
as dodoes ar to the Dutch, pheasants are to Germans, the
aardvark is to the Herero. The distinction between Elect and
Preterite at first seems clear but becomes problematical
because of conflicting definitions (variations on the quest
for salvation, attempts to transcend the human) attributed
to Pynchon's parallels and patterns, the most important of
these being the S&M and homosexual triangle. Springer
contends that "Elite and Preterite, we move through a cosmic
design of darkness and light" (Pynchon's allusions to
religion are always compounded with irony, parody, and his
idiosyncratic mergings and distortions, so for example,
William's Preterition contains several ironies and parodies
and is merged with Newtonian physics and distortions of
Gnosticism) and Pirate, as fantastic-surrogate discovers
that the Adenoid has a "master plan" for choosing only
certain personalities useful to it--there is a new election,
"a new perpetration abroad in England." The fact that
selection is occurring is clear, but what makes moral
distinction unclear is the determination of who is doing the
choosing and why. Frans Van der Groov, considers this
dilemma: "But if they were chosen to come to Mauritius, why
had they also been chosen to fail, to leave? Is that a
choosing, or is it a passing-over? Are they Elect, or are
they Preterite, and doomed as dodoes?" Springer contends
that "mistakes" are part of the plan, but would that satisfy
Van der Groov? Enzian wonders if his people have been passed
over or chosen for "something even more terrible." Perhaps
Pirate has been chosen or has chosen something more
terrible: "he understands where he is, now. It will be
possible, after all, to die in obscurity, without having
helped a  soul: without love, despised, never trusted, never
vindicated---to stay down among the Preterite, his poor
honor lost, impossible to locate or to redeem." It is Katje,
who knows so much what she is, who tells Pirate that
"however bad or good are arranged for the People, we will
always be bad." Imprisoned in the darkness of her soul, not
yet undramtically free, she takes part in "dancing
Preterition," and Pirate, fallen, among the Preterite, cries
"for persons, places, things left behind," but his
awareness, his knowledge that he is a Betrayer, does not
preserve him from the next layer in the spiral down, he
becomes a double agent, going over to the counterforce,
betraying the Firm, but a Newtonian mechanical inertial
system, "equal and opposite counterparts" has replaced the
the Grace of God, what will he betray next?  Thanatz
experiences this inertia, one of his earlier lessons (very
Dante eh?) in being preterite is that he must understand
that he "won't escape any of the consequences he sets up for
himself now, not unless it's by accident." The opposition of
Elect and Preterite  parallels the Pavlovian notion of the
opposite and the creation of the ultra paradoxical
phase--distinguishing pleasure from pain, light from dark,
dominance from submission, life from death, guilt from
innocence. Here the ultraparadoxical, the weakening, the
secular/scientific perversion of religious quests is the
"paranoids, schizoids, moral imbeciles, the  Laboratory is
the War, the War goes on in America, Turkeys are to
Americans as Pigs are to the Puritans.