GRGR (19) Pokler WAS Re: Dialectics and conspiracy

[Doug Millison]

Terrance asked, "Does Pokler doubt this destiny? Doubt the system won?"
He believes in the Rocket and the promised transcendence. We see Pokler's
doubts grow throughout this episode, but he manages to deny them until he
goes into Dora and must confront the truth of what he's helped to create.

Not only does Pokler's justified paranoia re the Rocket (at ground Zero)
parallel Slothrop's, it's perhaps worth noting that Pokler pulls a Slothrop
and virtually disappears from the novel after he puts  "his gold wedding
ring" on the finger of the "random woman" (and what does that symbolic
wedding signify?) in Dora (p. 433).  He appears only in flashbacks on the
few occasions he's seen in the remainder of a novel -- with one exception,
when Slothrop finds Pokler in his basement at Zwolfkinder, where Pokler
provides Slothrop with crucial information about Ilse and Imipolex G, and
even here, Pokler seems more ghost than human, introduced (p. 575) as "A
voice calling from the blue shadow behind a wall."

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
http://www.millison.com
http://www.online-journalist.com