GRGR(18): Whose sky is it, anyway?

[Jeremy Osner]

A passage near the beginning of Slothrop and Greta's first sex, on p.
396, made me stop and think:

      Something... that dreams Prussian and wintering across their
    meadows, in whatever cursive lash-marks wait across the flesh
    of their sky so bleak, so incapable of any sheltering, waiting to
    be summoned... No. No -- he still says "their," but he knows
    better. His meadows, his sky... his own cruelty.

Ok. Well first of all, what is the referent for "their"? "Something that
dreams Prussian"? "Somebody" who has "already educated him"? (This
would, of course, be Katje; but why would she, from Holland, "dream
Prussian"?) (It's not "Them", judging from the lower-case.) My guess is
that "their" is Slothrop's picture of the German man, which he has got
primarily from movie images. It's a way of foreshadowing Franz Pökler's
fetishes. It also ties in nicely with Leni Pökler's picture of the
German man, back on p. 162 (and thanks to Seb T. for pointing out the
location of this passage):

      On their backs in the meadows and mountains, watching the sky,
    masturbating, yearning. Destiny waits, a darkness latent in the
    texture of the summer wind.

  Note the repeated reference to the meadows, the sky. For Leni, the
"man" is the "other"; for Slothrop, the "German" is the "other". "But he
knows better." He has become the other. I'm not sure what it means here
that Slothrop is turning into a German; except I think it has to do with
his sense of identity weakening, the borders of his personality becoming
fuzzy and translucent.

--
Mortals are immortals, and
immortals are mortals, the one
living the other's death and
dying the other's life.

Heraclitus, quoted by Bertrand Russell
http://www.readin.com/books/westernphilosophy/