GRGR(19): Whipping Gretel

[David Morris]

--- Jeremy Osner <jeremy at xyris.com> wrote:
> The transition from Slothrop's experience whipping
> and fucking Greta
> Erdmann, to Pökler's experience years earlier,
> fantasizing about doing it,
> is totally seamless, which suggests to me some sort
> of kinship between the two of them. What do they
> have in common besides their real/imagined
> coupling with Marge? 

This "real/imagined" aspect is the heart of the
matter.  Polker (poke her?) carries Greta's image into
his sex with Leni.  Leni is later ushered away by
Them.  The "real" celluloid bondage sex scene is later
"relived" again, this time with stand-in Slothrop
fulfilling Greta's fantasy (Max having been ushered
away _previously_ by Them).  There is a sort of
Mobius-strip symmetry going on here, playing with
time, gender, and reality.  Very elegant.

> Pökler obviously, I mean we're just about to
> read a 30-page story
> about his passivity, that is practically the sum
> total of his character in the
> book. And Slothrop too, I think, sort of moves along
> the pathways laid out for him by his author without
> making many futile attempts at resistance.[snip]

I think this is only half correct.  Polker does seem
an object lesson in passivity and slavery in service
to Them.  To a degree all of us share his sin,
including Slothrop.  But Slothrop has a spirit Polker
never approaches.

> - and we could talk here about the "What
> sea is this you have crossed?" line in the previous
> section, how it could be directed at Slothrop

Or at us.

> -- we will have to wait and see :--) 
> I reckon I might assert that Pökler is the passive
> element in Slothrop's nature -- but I'm not sure
> what I would mean by that. [snip]

Whatever you might mean, I think its closer to the
point.

David Morris
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